My tests are showing DRW at 40% of normal damage, give or take.

20 minutes of auto attacking to establish auto-attack max hit and crit and compared maxes against DRW crits. Showing 38-42% of auto-attack damage.

So i say 40%.

My unglyphed DRW only lasts 23s with 100 runepower. Other players around me could confirm this.

Your math is based on the incorrect assumption that old MoM is a 45% damage increase on criticals. Old MoM is a +45% increase of the critical damage bonus... ie you do 145% extra damage on crits instead of 100% extra damage. Thus, on a crit, you do 22.5% extra damage.

However, its also deeply flawed in other ways. If you have a 50% crit rate (0.5) then 0.5 * 1.45 = .725. Does this then mean that MoM gives you a 37.5% damage reduction on all your specials? Of course not.

crit chance x 0.225 should be the correct calcuation I think.. 100% crit rate = 22.5% extra damage, 50% crit rate = 11.25% extra damage, 35% crit rate = 7.8% extra damage.

Also new might of mograine is 10% increased damage compared with +45% crit bonus damage on live, so the break even point is crit * 0.225 = 0.1 , or 44.4% crit chance. If you can get higher than that on your specials (which is doable with full raid buffs) then its a net nerf.

That is also a bit incorrect. 1% damage increase is the always the same no matter your crit rate, but the relative damage increase of 1% crit or x% crit damage changes depending on what your crit rate is. The more crit you have, the less damage 1% crit will give in comparison to a pure 1% damage. You can see this in that going from 0% crit to 1% crit is a 1% damage increase, but going from 99% crit to 100% crit is a 0.5% damage increase.

Basically it means you can't simply divide the 22.5% extra damage you get at 100% to get the relative values at 50% and 35%. Instead at 50% crit you gain about 15% damage, while at 30% crit you gain about 10.4% damage.

x is the average damage done by a hit
50% crit:
Without MoM 0.5 * x + 0.5 * x * 2 = 1.5x
With MoM 0.5 * x + 0.5 * x * 2.45 = 1.725x
1.725/1.5 = 1.15

30% crit:
Without MoM 0.7 * x + 0.3 * x * 2 = 1.3x
With MoM 0.7 * x + 0.3 * x * 2.45 = 1.435x
1.435/1.3 = 1.104

So MoM gives 15% damage at 50% crit, and a bit over 10% damage at 30% crit. The change to MoM is a solid nerf if your crit chance is over 30% for special attacks.

Those are two threads that just bitch about the changes without the slightest consideration for why they might have been implemented. Really not worth reading. I mean, seriously, "Unholy tanking is gutted!" by increasing the cooldown on Bone Shield? Give me a break.

The reasons seem pretty clear to me. They don't want us chaining tank cooldowns, as it's already been demonstrated that DK tanks are too effective. The dps changes, on the other hand, are obviously across-the-board nerfs to PvP burst damage. No more crit damage bonuses or massive burst with DRW. I don't particularly like being balanced around PvP, but I can assure you nonetheless that the sky is not falling.

My only concern at this point is with Blood dps and the DS/OB dilemma, which didn't really get addressed in this wave of changes.

Well according to WoR: which if true, is just in line with the rest of the changes, following the anti-burst dps route. Not really surprised with the changes. Think I might miss big bursty numbers in my screen, but like Leaflock says, sky is not falling. I have seen the current burst potential in PvP from both sides, didn't feel very right.

Now if only Annihilation gets moved to Blood somehow...

Could you elaborate abit on this? I've seen it mentioned before but I think I have yet to encounter some similar problem. I assume you're talking about the 51.13.7 rotation, PS IT HS*2 OB dc OB HS*4 dc? Which in 3.1 is done with DS instead with a 51.2.18 build.

From what I can see, if you delay using the DRs, it is using the Unholy ones first for HS but you still end up with the 2 Frost Runes in the form of DRs, so PS+IT isn't an issue. The only problem I can see is that in the followup rotation the first OB cannot happen till a FR refreshes meaning you'd go dump before both OBs and then do them together. Somehow though, this small mess up seems to smooth out in the followup rotations.

[...]

On a sidenote it seems they have increased the melee haste gain from Haste Rating for DKs by 30%
Now I know Haste is the last thing you'd go for but in current content it's like a disease you can't get rid of. I guess abit more white damage makes Necrosis abit better too. However maybe I'm not getting the change right, but currently
on Live:
- 418 Haste Rating (12.75% Haste) | 3.19 speed
on PTR:
- 418 Haste Rating (16.57% Haste) | 3.19 speed

Same gear, using Jawbone

Thats the thing though, shouldnt 4% more haste atleast slightly increase swings-speed? or did I completely misunderstand the haste / swing system

Yes, sorry I wasn't clear, that's exactly what I'm wondering too.

Well, that's a separate issue from needing Annihilation for Obliterate. People have complained about how death runes work for quite a while (I think I put in a suggestion about it in beta). It's not a bug, it's just the way runes are currently used, and you have to work around it in your rotation. When the game looks for a rune to use, it uses any B U F first, then Death Runes if necessary from left to right (or however you have your rune interface set up, I haven't used the default one forever). If you have 4 Death Runes all sitting ready to use, it'll use them in order and the U U F F come back in an awkward order next time around. Right now, you just have to adjust so you don't let that happen, or so that it doesn't affect your rotation.

What really annoys me is oftentimes if I'm blood specced with DRM and Obliterate/death strike with 4 death runes up, I will end up only getting 1 or 0 death runes back, reason being that the frost and unholy runes it converts into death runes are the ones that are already death runes and not the ones I actually spent on the ability.

The coding for death runes seems really really buggy.

my only question is, am i well geared enough for the 51/0/20 spec? ... you wrote for the "well geared DK" and I feel as though I am pretty well geared but not uber geared.

Edit -- I should have said: am geared enough for 51/0/20 DiseaseFree spec or should go 51/0/20 AlternaBlood? I just got back into WoW from like a 12 week break, so when I quit I considered myself well-geared but now I don't know where people are at and where I am compared.
Sorry if this question sucks...

With some of the new gear posted on mmo-champion I've noticed tons of armor penetration. I'm throwing the gear into a few spreadsheets to see where it comes out in comparison to current gear when using the new 51/2/18 spec, but I can't seem to find a good stat weight for armor penetration.

I've always questioned its value of 1.04 for stat weighting (given by the EJ DK DPS Compendium), it just seems too high.

Does anyone have a more accurate estimate on how valuable armor penetration is for a blood build, or is a stat weight of 1.04 pretty accurate?

Try it and see, though you will see majority of regular raiders in full t7/t7.5 with Naxx 25 weaponry with some in BIS gear as well.

Hello to all Bloody DKs :p

Since i am an old Enhance Shamy, the new world of the DK dps opened to me when I did Naxx last time. In fact I wasnt bad with my DPS (depending on bosses) but I am asking myself some questions.

My spec is a 51/13/7

My single target rotation is : IT > PS > HS > HS > OB > Dump OB > HS > HS > HS > HS > Dump repeat.

First of all : Is that okay ?
second of all : Which presence should i use ? obviously blood ? because on a dummy, i am getting 30 dps less in unholy presence but I am really not sure (maybe there is a different rotation in unholy) Does Blood scales better with gear ?

Third of all : I need a good multiple target rotation. I know blood is bad for multi target but what could be the most useful ?

Thanks in advance to my readers and thanks for all the information here !

With that spec use OB as often as you can instead of HS. Better to use 51/0/20 disease free or 51/0/20 alternative blood though these days.

It has always been like that. I mentioned it on this page, a few posts above you.

I know that it has always been like that. But that doesn't mean, that it is working as intended. Because the way it works sucks hard because it messes up the following cycle (you have to wait for the U rune).

And in addition to that, the "UI" still doesnt work right with deathrunes.
When you have 2 Deathrunes cooling down and all other runes are on cooldown as well, than the UI will show a cooldown on the strikes that ignores the deathrunes.

I actually find it doubtful. Ghostcrawler's comments regarding DS and OB indicated that they already considered Blood/Frost "viable" and were waiting to see if a similarly viable build emerged for Blood/Unholy. Moving Annihilation or granting its effect to another talent would destroy any reason for Blood to go into Frost beyond Runic Power Mastery. That seems to be counterproductive to Blizzard's goals.

If blizzard intends blood dks to go frost for anihilation, than i don't understand why they moved morbidity.
This is actually a 15% deathcoil dmg lost in 3.1 when you want annihilation as blood.

And i really doubt that blood dps was to high so that this "nerf" would be justified.
And right now frost subspec has nothing but RP mastery and annihilation.
There is still no real synergy compared to an unholy subspec so i don't like to be forced to go frost or die but maybe this is just me.

You're definitely right; the 3.1 changes we've seen so far make the 51/13/7 spec even less desirable, which is pretty perplexing considering what they've told us so far. Runic Power Mastery is nice, but moving Morbidity loses out on some DC damage and DnD utility, which I found useful. Depending on your raid makeup, though, Virulence is still handy and not a huge loss compared to Morbidity's DC bonus for blood. Still, I've been trying to make 51/13/7 work on the PTR, but it seems to consistently come out below a spec like 51/2/18. When you think about what you're comparing:

51/13/7
PS IT HS HS OB
OB HS HS HS HS
+56% IT damage (once per 20 seconds)
+20% FF damage
+3% melee strike crit
+50% more Obliterates (over 60 seconds, you trade 2 HS and 1 IT PS for 2 OB)

51/2/18
OB PS IT HS HS
HS HS HS HS OB
PS IT HS HS HS HS
+15% DC damage
+3% Strength
+20% auto-attack damage
+Perma-ghoul (~600 dps raid buffed, glyphed)
-slightly reduced disease uptime

It's kind of hard to see why they're expecting "some DKs will want to spec for Annihilation", at least given what we have right now. The ghoul is really what cements it. Without the ghoul, the specs are closer than they are on live (51/13/7 compared with 51/0/20, that is), but the ghoul is a pretty big bonus. Granted, without Night of the Dead, your ghoul won't have maximum uptime on certain fights-- it was basically a non-factor when I tried it on Hodir, for instance.

The biggest thing to remember is that we're not done for 3.1. In beta/PTR builds, it often seems like they'll make some substantial but carefully considered nerfs and then wade through all the QQ to see where the different specs are landing. After that, a later build with AWESOME SMALL TWEAKS usually buffs things back up a bit.

Blizzard intends for Frost to be a viable subspec for Blood DKs. As you and Leaflock have pointed out Annihilation isn't enough for that to be true save for fights where Ghouls are a null factor. Suggesting we should move its effect somewhere else is directly contrary to Blizzard's stated goals.

Those goals can change, but until that happens it's extremely unlikely that Annihilation is going to go anywhere.