Not sure if it's been mentioned but from WoR:

That, together with RPM gets us looking at a 22 + 10 + 6 = 38 sec duration DRW? :o

Almost 3 full rotations and, oddly enough, longer than Hysteria now.

Update on PS:Quote from the Unholy Thread:
PS appears to only effect additional damage, not weapon damage. Or it's 60% of that 50% weapon damage. I'm guessing the latter. So don't worry about PS overpowering HS. Not gonna happen.

Looking at the talent changes (3.1 patch) listed over on MMO Champ.
I see that Death Strike in the Blood tree can have its damage increased by 30%.
Does anyone know how this will/or if it would compete with Obliterate? (both glyphed and un glyphed)
I havent did the math yet, as I am getting ready to head to work at this momment.

Obviously saving Blood from 3.1 > Work. Get your priorities straight, man!

Kidding, aside. I'm curious about this as well. If it is indeed meant to be Blood's version of Obliterate, and glyphed/talented hits harder, then we will have a good hard hitting strike to use and not worry about killing our diseases, while keeping us adequately healed to keep us about that 75% hp mark that we need for increased damage. The downfall is ... Sigil of Awareness would be the suck for us, unless BS gets added to it.

I wish I didn't fail at math so I could help out in this regard, unfortunately anything more than 2 + 2 = Nachos is too much for me to help with.

Any new rotations on 3.1, i noticed some of the tooltips are broken.

changes to blood seem to be an up but i would like to see more info on what specs and rotations are going to be used. The zero disease still viable?

is that DRW glyph really out??

Even IF BS got added to the sigil (or had a similar effect from another sigil) would that make up the difference? I have a hard time believing that. If someone had the math to prove my hunch wrong it would be greatly appreciated. Or even some math to prove me right so I can just reserve myself to respecing Unholy once 3.1 hits live if all these changes go through as proposed. =p

Are those numbers with or without the Sigil for Oblit?

Well, with DS not getting additional damage from diseases, i suppose it would be just as possible to go 51/2/18 with RPM and do a diseaseless rotation still. Plus we get permanent pet. glyphed HS even without 2 diseases still hits for 87% wpn damage. DRW, BS, and DS seem possibly the best glyphs, although the DC glyph for 32 RP DC seems alright. With the change to sudden death, doesn't seem to be any reason not to do HSx8, DSx2. Or, could lose a HS each rotation to keep up both diseases with pestilence (which last 21 seconds). Unfortunately i'm not on the PTR to test such things. One pretty big drawback to using DS is Sigil of Awareness though. If it were applied to DS as well, then I could easily get behind using DS over OB. Might have to hope for another sigil to help us.

I found a nice topic started by Sanguinivar on the EU forums for the DK class, it stated that pestilence abuse used while having a DRW up copied multiple times to the point where it started hitting for some really silly numbers.

So i went to OS today and gave it a go.

The basic trick goes as following, find a good group of trash.
Any nax AOE pack will do, in my instance i used sartharions whelps.

get max RP, up your drw and spam pestilence.

the following numbers by me are the result. and consequently i let my guild's dk's try the same trick on the following attemps.

The dps of my DRW
Wow Web Stats

Other dk replicating doing 19k
Wow Web Stats

Thid Dk replicating using Death rune mastery.
Wow Web Stats

the interesting thing is that, where as the DK only gets the amount of DPS you would expect from just using
pestilence the DRW gets an Insane amount more.

as seen here
Wow Web Stats





Unfortunatly like most of you know, the base dmg from pestilence will be removed in 3.1 making this impossible once more.

Enjoy it while it last

Why use DS in a diseaseless rotation? Assuming it hits equally hard as oblit (unlikely, although probably close in damage), you still lose out on 4T7 usefulness and sigil of awareness usefulness. Half the reason (IMO) to use DS in a 51/2/18 build is to not worry about knocking diseases off. Also, considering how diseased 51/0/20 is basically on par with diseaseless 51/0/20 on live, why NOT disease with a stronger PS, almost-oblit-level DS, and a HS that improves significantly from the diseases?

With Runic Power Mastery (which I expect will be standard in any Blood build), the DS Glyph and Imp DS there's the potential for a 118.6% damage coefficient for DS. Using Arreat's base numbers from earlier (and counting the glyphs) I get 1747 damage for Obliterate and 1732 damage for DS.

Obliterate will crit 6% more, but DS will crit for more damage. At most crit rates this comes out to be roughly even, favoring Obliterate on the lower end and DS as crit increases.

Effectively comes down to the utility of self-healing through DS and the talent options opened up by skipping Annihilation. These would be my rough assumptions for what a 3.1 OB and DS builds would look like, though there some confusion as to whether Epidemic is still necessary for either. For now I'll assume that both require it.

3.1 OB: 51/13/7
3.1 DS: 52/2/17 or 51/2/18

OB: +3% Crit, +56% IT Damage
DS: +3% Strength, 60% Stronger Ghoul, 5/5 Necrosis, Corpse Explosion+Perma Ghoul or BCB (3/3 if you drop Mark of Blood, 2/3 otherwise).

Without doing the math it looks as though DS is a better option. For large AoE fights using DS over OB will help keep you above 90% health, otherwise a Pet Ghoul is many times better than anything the OB build offers. If Ulduar is chock full of AoE, or pet management isn't your thing, Necrosis and BCB seem like more than enough to equal the OB build's benefits.

For this reason I heavily expect both Blood DPS and Tanks to look to DS over OB barring changes. I had a different initial impression, but this was due to a faulty assumption (I mistakenly thought the DS glyph was 1% per 5 runic power).

First thing is,

After looking at what people seem to be considering the standard 51/2/18 build, I think it may actually be better to go with 51/1/19. The reason for this is after playing Frost with 2 points in Runic Power Mastery (for 120 RP) and having the FS glyph (For a 32RP Frost Strike) I found that I could reliably get off 3 Frost Strikes. I decided to try putting 3 points into Runic power mastery (130 DP) and found that I could almost never build up enough runic power in order to fire off 4 Frost strikes. This seems to be what will most likely happen again if you use the DC Glyph in order to lower its runic power cost down to what Frost Strike is now.

With this in mind, I feel like it might be more adventagous to go with a build more like this: 51/1/19 with Glyphs of BS / DC / DS (assuming that Death Strike is in fact bloods new version of OB, otherwise swap it out for the OB Glyph).

I think the only trouble that may come about from this is that if you're not using OB at the end of your rotation (and DS is not added to the four set for the added RP), as well as removing the IT Runic Power Glyph for a higher damage Glyph, you may not be able to build up enough Runic Power.

The advantage of this build is that it still gives you a bit more runic power in order to get off 3 DCs as long as you have it Glyphed. As well as taking the 3/3 Morbidity for the 15% increased DC damage for the 3 you will be able to fire off at the end of the rotation, as well as any that get proc'ed from sudden doom. The build also gives you perma-goul. IMO the 15% increased damage off of all the DC's will be greater than Blood-Caked Blade with an internal 3 second cool down.

However, I'm not that great in doing WoW-Math so I'd love to see that my last statement is true. Please forgive me if its way off. As an afterthough, How much would you lose from not having the extra 3 seconds on DRW. I believe the added DC Damage + the Perma-Goul would still outweigh the 3 second loss.

EDIT: Added Glyphs

EDIT2: Added last line after realizing DRW would be affected by the 15 less runic power (stupid I forgot it in the first place)

You probably still want 2 points in Runic power mastery. The glyph of death strike increases the damage done for every 5 runic power you have. So you never want to go empty and ideally you'd like to stay above the halfway mark to maximize DS damage.

One thing that worries me about BCB, is with the haste I have on my gear, my 2-hander is close to swinging faster than 3.0 seconds, which would really mess with the BCB procs. WF probably pushes it down to 2.75 seconds, so I'd have to wait every 5.5 seconds for a BCB proc.

I haven't seen much mention of the ArP change to Blood Gorged. Everyone harps on how awful ArP is. I find expertise is hard to come by as one gears up for 25 man conent, it is also pricey in itemization points regardless of ilevel. I guess my question is "Is the 10% ArP gained outwiegh the big drop in exp?" So I did the math.


As I see it with the new calculations for ArP 10% armor reduction would equal approx 154 ArP rating while 5 expertise gained for the talent before the change represented roughly 41-49 expertise rating. So lets do some math...

If we take the static armor value of all bosses being 13083 (I found this here on EJ) and use the following formula:

%Reduction = (Armor / ([467.5 * Enemy_Level] + Armor - 22167.5)) * 100

we get the following:

46.20438 = (13083/((467.5 * 80) + 13083 - 22167.5)) * 100

This can be simplified down to:

46.20438 = (13083/(15232.6 + 13083)) * 100

End result being bosses have a static 46.2% physical damage reduction from base armor. If a boss is reducing our damage by 46.2% we can assume that we are doing 53.8% of our dps (assuming 100% dps = 0 armor)

we can use that number to figure out our damage increase through Armor Penetration. With the new 10% armor reduction, we can calculate:
130838*.10 = 1308

1308 being the armor ignored, essentially lowering the boss armor value to 11775. Using our above simplified formula we get:

43.5988 = (11775/(15232.6 + 11775)) * 100

So with the boss only reducing our damage by 43.60%, we can now figure we are doing 56.40% of our total possible DPS. To figure our net dps gain from the new lower armor, we calculate it like this:

56.40/53.8 = 1.0483

for a total of 4.83% damage buff to all phyiscal based attacks.

Without getting parses from some fights on PTR I don't know how the new blood rotations damage will break up between magic and physical damage. So I will use one of the only deep blood parses I could find that actually used a diseased rotation. I found this in the top dps thread Diseased Blood Rotation.

Using this parse we find that 23.4% of his dps was from non-physical attacks and he did 6359 dps. Lets figure how the how new ArP rating would of helped him out.

6359 * .234 = 1488dps (Magic DPS)

Leaving 4871 dps as phyiscal attacks. Lets now apply or damage buff we found above.

4871*1.0483 = 5106.23 physical dps.

Now adding the magic damage back into the mix we get:

5106.23+1488 = 6594.23 DPS

After all of this we have figured the new ArP portion of the Blood Gorged talent would of netted the above player approx 235dps, giving us an overall dps increase of 3.7% DPS


So my question for you guys 1.5% dodge/parry reduction more valuble that a 3.7% DPS buff? I think not.

PS: I am by no means an expert if you see an issue with my numbers please correct me so I don't spread misinformation. =)

PPS: Corrected an error. I assumed the old talent netted 11 expertise. I forgot Veteran of 3rd war netted 6. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

The number of replication casts seems to scale for the number of mobs being hit, you'll notice on larger pullsthe pestilence band becoming darker and thicker.

Thanks for popping this one on here though, I hadn't quite enough testing beyond self replication to post it on here when I made the forum thread.

For now it allows for mass AoE situations to be handled swiftly and effectivly.

I'm speculating that the rotation for a blood DK will most likely become something like this:

Ignoring the Start of the rotation since in an ideal fight its only done once, the main part of the rotation will go:
PS > IT > HS > HS >HS > HS > HS > HS > DS > DUMP

I put OB/DC since I'm sure that you need to have a minimum amount of runic power in order to make it more beneficial to DS instead of OB

Now, for runic power:

For the main part of the rotation, if we assume that we start at a worst case scenario of 0RP,

10 + 10 + 10 + 10 +10 + 10 + (Dump would normally go here) + 10 + 10 + 15 = 95

I'm ignoring the IT Glyph because with the addition of the Death Strike Glyph as well as the supposed DRW Glyph, I'm assuming that it will no longer be used.

That means that if you ignore the Dump in the middle of the rotation and just sit there doing nothing, you'd have 95 Runic Power at the end of the first rotation plus an approximate ((9 * 1.5) / 5) * 2 = 4 +/- 1 Runic Power for the duration of the rotation. Therefore on average you'll be able to pull 100 Runic Power a rotation assuming near ideal Conditions and no changes to the Four set bonus to include Death Strike. Then using the Death Coil Glyph you use up 96 of that Runic Power on 3 Death Coils leaving you with around 4-5 Runic at the start of your next rotation.

From this I'm seeing that you may break the 100 mark on average but not really the 115 mark. I may be wrong however due to the fact that if you're running around a lot and throw in a few more strikes here or there or the fight goes on for a few more second and you gain a bit more RP from Butchery. Regardless, I feel as if the 2 points aren't really worth it, and the DPS increase will in fact come from putting the 1 extra point into Perma-Goul.


I think you may have misunderstood me, or I'm misunderstanding you. I was saying that with the 3sec internal cool down BCB would not be worth taking. Did you think I said it would be? I agree with you that it most likely wouldn't be very good.

I don't understand this excessive concern over haste on gear and the 3s CD of BCB. Even with a 3.6 weapon, windfury and swift retribution pushes your swing speed below 3s. With a 3.4 weapon, in order to get two white swings off in a single BCB CD (i.e. to get your swing speed down to 1.5), you'd need about 30% haste on gear during heroism/lust, or 83% haste on gear outside heroism. With current itemization and a two-hander, you're essentially guaranteed to have a single swing that can't proc BCB after each BCB proc. This is not to argue that the nerf isn't ridiculous, but haste on gear doesn't really affect the two-hander proc rate of BCB.

actually, with a swing speed of 1.5 (well, a limit on swing speed as it approaches 1.5), you get three off per BCB CD.
Time 0: swing
Time 1.4999: swing
time 2.9999: swing

3 swings in <3 seconds.

Right. Assuming the first swing proc'd BCB, then that's two swings for which BCB cannot proc. I guess my wording wasn't potentially unclear, but I meant two swings off during the time BCB is cooling down, not in total during a three second window. So if speed >= 3, you will never miss BCB due to cooldown (essentially impossible with existing itemization/buffs); when 1.5 <= speed < 3 then you can make two swings in a single cooldown, making every swing immediately following a BCB proc unable to proc BCB; when .75 <= speed < 1.5, then you will have two swings following each BCB proc that cannot proc BCB, and so on.

The talent only gave 5 expertise, which is ~41 expertise rating at 80. My dps gear had me above expertise cap anyway (with 0 expertise gemmed), so this is a welcome change for me.

Why is it that a RP dump seems so important in blood rotations where you're generally gcd limited and Heart Strike (especially in 3.1) is better damage on average than Death Coil? I'm really failing to understand this. Dumping RP would be a dps loss if you're casting a Death Coil when you could be casting a Heart Strike. Maybe I'm missing something here, maybe not.

In 3.1 the base duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever is being increased to 15 seconds. In addition to the talent specs this gives them a total duration of 21 seconds. Coupled with the fact that Sudden Doom now procs automatically and therefore frees up a global cool down, there should be a decent amount more time at the end when you can fire off more DC's. Also, Runic Power generation is also more important because it seems that blizzard wants DC to be Bloods OB, however its power is dependent on how much Runic you can generate before you can use it.