brief question, in the 51/0/20 DiseaseFree build, does it not make more sense to grab Rune Tap + Vampiric Blood rather than Mark of Blood + Vampiric. Since I have Blood Gorged staying above 75% is definitely a significant boost to my DPS and if I drop below it I can pop VB+RT for a significant self-heal. Where as otherwise I could only toss up VB for a temp health boost.

I guess I just want to know the reasoning behind getting Mark of Blood over Rune Tap?

Hitting VT+RT for a significant self heal is useful, but not for maintaining Blood Gorged. You're losing two Heart Strikes in order to keep a 10% damage buff. You'll have to keep that buff for the next ~20 seconds in order to break even on that loss. It would be better to let your healers top you off.

The reason Mark of Blood is sometimes chosen over Rune Tap is for raid utility. It's generally decent, and sometimes fantastic (Patchwerk, Razuvious) for helping out healers. Both abilities are extremely useful during progression, and fairly useless for farming, so it boils down to personal preference.

I personally prefer my diseaseless Blood build, which picks up Mark of Blood, Rune Tap and Vampiric Blood.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Obviously it goes without saying that in 3.1 our builds will change substantially with the death of diseaseless. I can't say I'm that bothered by that, as right now people are liking diseaseless Blood because of the numbers it can put out rather than based on some natural affinity for not using diseases.

I took a look at the spec and I'm curious to know what type of damage you put by running disease free and not getting DRM.

I assume your rotation is just OB-OB-HS-HS.

What do you do with the rest of your time?


Just doing quick math in my head I think you'd be MUCH better off using those OB's to convert FU runes to D runes for more HS action, not only for more damage, but to fill out your GCD's a bit better, assuming you are using OB-OB-HS-HS as your rotation.

Yes, OB -> OB -> HS -> HS using Sudden Doom procs immediately and DCs during "empty" periods in the rotation (when I'm waiting for runes to refresh).

Latest WWS is here, although bear in mind that Army of the Dead damage is not counted so on a handful of fights (Patchwerk, Sapphiron, a couple of others) my actual DPS is higher than that listed.

I did particularly well on Gluth in that above linked WWS: Wow Web Stats

@concept

I do OB OB HS HS and there's always something to do with your GCDs. You keep up Horn, you DC twice per cycles (usually), you summon your ghoul. But yeah, because of sudden doom and other CDs, you aren't "wasting" GCDs. No more than Unholy does.

As far as mmo-champion and wowhead are concerned Imp Death Strike is still 15/30%. At maximum runic power (and glyphed) that means Death Strike will be doing 118.56% weapon damage. Obliterate (glyphed + two diseases present) does 126% weapon damage plus a potential 400-480 from the Sigil of Awareness.

However, there is no rotation yet that guarantees full runic power on every Death Strike. The best rotations I've seen will have one full and one 90-110 Death Strike. The effective average being 113% weapon damage. Also, most Blood/Unholy Obliterate rotations either involve a diseaseless Obliterate or a Death Strike, the former only doing 96% of weapon damage, and the later (unglyphed) doing 78% of weapon damage.

In the end Death Strike is currently better because it is more consistent and doesn't clear diseases. A single tick off of both Frost Fever and Blood Plague can easily be 1k damage lost, in addition to the damage losses from having to work around the mechanic. So ultimately two Obliterates is 222% weapon damage + 480 (+ higher crit chance) while two Death Strikes is ~226% weapon damage + 1k (+ self healing + some other Sigil + higher crit damage).

Hmm, I might be missing something here but are you refering to the single diseasless OB at the start of a blood/unholy rotation? Because that normally happens once per encounter; the first strike, to make 2 DRunes and start the rotation while all the other OBs land as the diseases are to wear off. Seemed to me you calculated the 2xOB dmg in the last line as if every 2nd OB is diseaseless.

I guess playing 32/39 for so long turned me into a psycho with button mashing with its 14 GCD rotation in Blood Presence.

I'm very impressed with your damage on Gluth, and am interested in trying something so simple out. I went to your armory link and noticed only a 166 hit rating, so it must not be showing you in your correct gear, but its probably just the armory so I'll check back later.

What I've always hated about the 6x HS in the 2nd cycle is that Sudden Doom procs back it up, but what are your thoughts on

OB-OB-HS-HS-DC-DC | OB-HS-HS-HS-HS-DC

Its still 12 GCDs like the rotation you are already using, just trading in OB and DC for two more HS. Seems like a good trade off to me.

---------------------

Anyway, back to 3.1

How is the current DS rotation with diseases stacking up to everything else at the moment, i.e. Unholy and Frost?

Going back over the last few pages I think I might have found an improvement on the simple DS rotation that has been posted quite a bit.

Already proposed simple rotation:

IT - PS - HS - HS - DS - DUMP
DS - HS - HS - HS - HS - DUMP

I'm thinking since it is only a 12 GCD rotation and we don't have to worry about Sudden Doom anymore the following might be better:

IT - PS - HS - HS - DS - HoW or something here
DS - HS - HS - HS - HS - DCx2

A full rotation only generates enough runic for 2x DC anyway (occasionally 3x DC), so if we count in the wasted CD I've included by not dumping RP after the first set of runes we are left with 13 GCDs making it fit perfect in the time we have. The big advantage I see here is throughout a boss fight we'll slowly but surely be climbing toward capping our runic power before a dump, meaning harder hitting Death Strikes (eventually 90 and 105 RP during DS spam), and having great setup for DRW in each full rotation. Sitting GCD capped this way doesn't seem like a bad thing either. Since after a minute or so into the fight you'll be capped RP mid way through the 2nd set of runes per rotation you could also get another DC off during Bloodlust/Heroism, but this is true for both rotations.

While I suppose you could fit another DC into the top rotation only being 12 GCDs, you'd only be able to do that 3/4ths of the time.

So just to make math easy the big difference here is 3 extra DCs per 4 rotations (or over a minute twenty) vs. 8 harder hitting Death Strikes over the same amount of time. The DS at the end of the first set of runes would be hitting for the same as the other rotation in the beginning, but when RP starts creeping up it'll be hitting a decent amount harder. The 2nd DS is where we see a substantial increase. Assuming the best possible scenario after dumping runic power in the regular rotation the DS glyph would up damage by 15.6% (assuming 39 runic power, because anything over that would have been dumped on DC), but assuming also the best possible scenario which is easily achieved by my proposed rotation the DS glyph ups that damage by 42%.

If I'm off my rocker here please let me know, but it just might be slightly better. I'll have to get on the PTR and test later in the week.

The DS rotation I've thus far been considering is

OB IT PS HS HS
HS HS DS HS HS

IT PS HS HS HS HS(short delay after this to line the runes up correctly)
DS HS HS DS

From there on doing.

IT PS HS HS HS HS
DS HS HS DS.

I'm debating if that's viable though seeing as how it burns 2 death runes per rotation on IT PS, making their effectiveness negligible. Having the Death Strikes both during the second rune cycle does provide you the ability to RP dump after the second death strike, and then replenish your RP during the following rune cycle before any more death strikes occur(meaning your RP will always be at max for death striking). Considering you regen 4 RP per rune cycle via Butchery, and glyph of death coil cuts the cost to 32 RP, this means you'd be spending 64 RP on 2 death coils, and the IT PS HS HS HS HS would return you 60, +4 from butchery, negating the 2 death coils. By the time the death strike rolls around your RP will be capped again and your DS will do full damage.

I logged out in my PvP gear (I keep my gear tied to a Presence and when I'm running around IF I use Unholy Presence which automatically equips my PvP gear), I'll try to remember to log out in PvE tonight.

It's basically identical except PvP uses Glad gloves and legs and PvE uses Valorous gloves and legs, with some ring changes too.

I suspect that the ArP would pay off, especially with the changes to Blood Gorged in 3.1 (10% passive ArP is massive).

I'm currently asking myself the same thing with regards to breaking the 4pc bonus. Often I am sitting at 100RP and generating more on top of that (wasted, but still it's being generated) so for Blood the 4pc bonus is nice but not game-breaking. Rawr is showing that for me, dropping the T7 Valorous legs and upgrading to Double Strikes from Razuvious would be a DPS increase, but that would mean breaking the bonus. Same with equipping the Obsidian Greathelm over my current T7 Valorous.

I think that this would be worth doing though, at least until 3.1 when 130 RP Blood builds will likely become commonplace.

Let's complete these numbers to see where we are now.

Let x be the same as above, i.e. the average damage per hit (non-crit that is, crits are explicitly taken into account)
So, assuming a crit rate of 50%, the new MoM gives us:
(0.5x + 0.5x * 2) * 1.1 = 1.65x
the old value was 1.725 (see the quoted post), so we get:
1.65/1.725 =~ 0.957
That means, in a raid setting where we are buffed to a 50% crit rate, MoM is nerfed by around 4.4%.

Assuming a crit rate of 30% the numbers are:
(0.7x + 0.3x * 2) * 1.1 = 1.43x
comparing this with the old value again:
1.43/1.435 =~ 0.997
So, when soloing or PvPing, you are only very slightly nerfed, by about 0.3%.

The main business on EJ.com is raiding theorycraft, so for us, the former calculation matters most - a 4.4% nerf on most of our special attacks is significant. But this will be offset by the new Sudden Doom mechanics and the new perma-Ghoul possibility, among other, more subtle "buffs" like the attainability of Runic Power Mastery.

I'm okay with the new blizzard stance to make DK damage less "spiky" because of concerns in PvP settings. But i've found my DPS to be mostly "in line" when compared to other classes. In fact, my capabilities seem a tad low when compared to an equally equipped mage simply spamming frostfire bolts, though it's not much.
So, when blizzard is speaking of "excessive" DK damage that needs to be nerfed, i hope that they are talking about DW builds and maybe some unholy issues. Blood builds are not in need of further nerfs!

Its mainly DW that did too much damage for it to be handled properly, Unholy is fine as it is even on live, yet they already buffed it on PTR by 20% SS dmg and the new disease mechanics gave SS a bit more damage.

All in all, even if they revert Outbreak to be 0 SS dmg, its still fine as Unholy.

That is why I dont understand their statement that they don't want everyone to be Unholy, yet Unholy keeps getting buffed and the other two tweaked into a bit subpar performance. Unholy is fine, let it rest!

Curious if there has been an in-depth trinket analysis for Blood spec that I may have missed. I've generally kept up with this thread from the start, so if I missed one, then shame on me. I know a lot of pages back there was talk of the unholy thread having a trinket discussion, but was there ever a more blood oriented one?

I'm currently rocking Mirror of Truth and FoFF (Not sure the ICD). I finally picked up a Darkmoon card, but I'm not sure which trinket to replace. Mirror is a +1000 ap proc, which is hard to deny is nice, FoFF is a constant 320 AP after about 20 seconds (enough time to get all 20 stacks), and Greatness is a constant ~200AP with a ~600AP proc (45 second ICD according to wowhead). I would assume Mirror + Greatness (+1800 AP when all is said and done and they proc together), but a static 320 AP for the sustained damage is hard to pass up (I'm not a math whizz, not sure the DPS difference).

Of course, there's also trinkets like Grim Toll which are nice for hit rating and the ArP will be nice come 3.1 ArP changes.

Again, I've not seen an in-depth blood trinket best-in-slot analysis anywhere, so if I'm blind, pointing me in the right direction would be appreciative.

Greatness card is without a question the best trinket for a dps dk (and many other classes). And most people will recommend Greatness+Mirror as the best combo.

In addition to BoK, Greatness scales with %str talents, ghoul, rune of the fallen crusader, ...
Just the static part of Greatness is worth around 90*1,1*2,5=247ap.

Fury of the five flights has been highly disputed in unholy thread iirc because it takes time to get the stacks and on movement fights it will fall off and have to be rebuilt. Fury trinket is much more suited for dw.

I can understand that concern, but on boss fights, how often is movement so impeding that it prevents you from keeping Fury going until the boss dies? For example, on Sarth 3D I have little trouble keeping the full 20 stacks for the duration of the fight (sans the first 30 seconds or so to build up to 20 stacks). Biggest problem fights I could see is Grobbulus or Gothik.

I know Greatness is without a doubt the best for us, but the 2nd best ... I don't know.

If i remember correctly Mirror averages about ~125 AP + 84crit (AP Equiv total would be around 233 for blood) when procs are taken into consideration. FoFF is great for sustained dps on a lot of fights.

Here is what I would do: Use both.

As Blood, on any fight with 'away time' I would be using Mirror (and there is no contest that mirror is better for Unholy due to Gargoyle). In fights you are confident you can keep the stack up use FoFF. The only argument against FoFF is the time it takes to stack up vs the length of the fight. 3Ds is a good example of a FoFF fight. Heigan is a good example of a Mirror fight.

Edit: Side not on time till 20 stacks for FoFF: It would be ~ 27 seconds depending on haste and when heroism is. So for average value in a 3 minute fight you are looking at approx. average of 291AP.

FFoF is the second best if you can keep the stack active. An alternative is Bandits. 320ap vs 190ap + 1%dps from proc.

To my knowledge DC glyph has been changed again and will up its damage rather than lowering its cost.

On the trinket issue.. i dont have Greatness but i do have Fotf and Bandit's. I was using these up untill recently but i find Mirror better on most fights, the stacking really is an issue. Say on a Patchwerk fights its fine but on these bosses:
Sartharion, Saphion, Anub, Maex, boss who drops sigil, Malygos, Gothik, 4H, Grob, could go on but all have some issues were the stack may fall off. Others are 100% certain it will fall off (saph etc), i loved this trinket when i was dw, but for me as 2h blood now its to much hassle.

I picked up the Greatness card yesterday as well and plan to swith between Fury and Mirror in the second trinket slot depending on fight mechanics. For example, Fury on Patch, but Mirror on Heigan. I don't have Bandit's. If anyone had any empirical data on Fury vs. Mirror for diseaseless blood, I'd love to see it.