Even in a priority system you need to be able to think on your feet...that's the wholepoint of it, it's not writen in stone and allows YOU to make the decissions that will improve your overall DPS rather than relying on some flawed rotation where you hit buttons on a timer. Of course if you've got .5 seconds to hit your last HS in the disease times then you pop that before you dump RP, but you shouldn't ever really get to a point where you need to make that choice if you're managing your RP properly...especially in Blood or without 4pc T7 bonus.

Thank you for the explanation.




I tried Sigil of Haunted Dreams during a naxx25 clear and it seems that its chance to proc / uptime is VERY low.
So i don't even consider using it in 3.1.

Dark Rider or Wild Buck will be my Sigil of choice.

There are reasons why people prefer the fixed rotation:

1) New content or challenging content - When you need to pay more attention to the situation, having a memorized fixed rotation makes it easier to survive.

2) It's easier to make a mistake using a priority system. You have a second to decide your next move. While it gets considerably easy with practice, you will still make mistakes. The more decisions you make, the more opportunities for error that you create. This is even harder for some builds than others. For example, using DW 0/20/51, a spell can drop to 1.0 sec GCD during Bloodlust as we specialize in Haste. So in order for the priority system to do more DPS, you need to do more DPS with an occasional mistake than a fixed rotation with none.

3) Learning a new role - If you are switching to an unfamiliar spec because your raid needs the buff, having a fixed rotation that you can easily memorize can prevent mistakes. People get sick. If you have to respec without warning to cover a missing raidmate, a fixed rotation makes your life easier.

The reason a fixed rotation is occasionally superior is the pilot. We're human. A good example is bowling. The first ball in a frame, aiming at 10 pins, is always the same. So why don't people always bowl 300? I mean you've done the same thing thousands of times. Sometimes for professionals, hundreds of thousands of times. The reason is mistakes. We tilt the ball slightly off. It lands at the wrong point because we use slightly too much strength.

A priority system is the same. You are tracking a bunch of things at the same time. Timers for Blood, Unholy, and Frost runes. Disease timers. Buff timers. Your ghoul (in 3.1). The boss events as they happen. Your health if you are being damaged. Your runic power bar. Your Blood Tap timer. Is it time to blow DRW? Do you have to track and/or DPS adds? There are plenty of opportunities for errors. Like professional bowlers, you will get much better with practice. But you'll never be perfect.

A beginning bowler is taught to bowl straight. A mediocre bowler is taught the basics of spin on the first roll but is encouraged to throw straight balls to make spares. A good bowler uses spin to makes spares a straight ball can't. A great bowler uses spin on every throw, even the straight ones because the right spin makes it stay straight.

Priority systems are like the spin. It can be a tool to get better. But it takes a lot of practice and at first, you'll end up in the gutter. But with practice, you'll be nearly perfect with your strikes.

Oddball question, how does DRW work with DW?
Does it copy both weapons? Does it copy the MH but swing as though it's DW? Does it only copy the MH?

Also, does DRW just do 50% of specials or 50% of all damage?
I saw some mention that it might do 100% auto attack damage, but 50% of our specials (on PTR).

Mostly curiosity since 2H Blood people have more experience with DRW than the DW posters.

I don't think that's the case, even with diseases. It was long ago discovered that the [Sigil of the Dark Rider] does not add 90 damage to each strike at level 80, but it gets divided up instead. Awareness is better on live even if you use HS as your primary attack. I'd have to test it, but I'm fairly certain [Sigil of Haunted Dreams] or [Sigil of the Wild Buck] are at least marginally better.

Original source:

What needs to be added to the front page is under what circumstances raid bosses will count as snared for the purposes of the glyph. Some of the examples given there are spurious, because bosses don't get frost nova'd. We need to focus on actual, practical raid debuffs when we're trying to maximize raid dps.

For example (feel free to add useful, realistic raid debuffs here):

• Frostfire bolt
• Desecration

Now, if your mages are maximizing their dps, they will most likely not be FFB specced. None of ours are, they claim it's a huge dps loss. We don't need to digress into discussions about mage dps, but our last FFB mage has gone over to some sort of hybrid arcane spec and there's no bringing him back ;-)

So are we really limited to ONE debuff option for a raid boss to trigger our glyph, desecration?
This is sort of problematic, because you can't apply desecration as a blood spec. Sure, your UH spec buddy is dropping desecration, but he won't be thinking to position it on the boss - in fact, it may not be possible for him to do so.

Would you guys say blood dps suffers significantly without an FFB mage, or is there another raid debuff that makes up for it?

Correct me if I'm wrong but Infected Wounds should also count.

I'm pretty sure Infected Wounds counts as a snare on bosses since the debuff is still applied. I can't completely prove this because we always have a Feral Druid with Infected Wounds, but in our 2nd to last Patchwerk kill, Infected Wounds was the ONLY type of snare debuff present, and here's the #s:

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish


Average HS hit of 2696, Average HS crit of 6861. Here's the #s the week before that:

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

Average HS hit of 2417, Average HS crit of 6245. On the 2nd parse I had Frostfire Bolt + Infected Wounds + Desecration. So my HS was hitting about 10% harder on parse #1 despite not having FFB or Desecration.

The only gear change between those two weeks was weapon. 2nd parse I used Jawbone, 1st one i had Betrayer. Considering the difference in weapon damage on the two isn't that great, I can't imagine Betrayer making enough of a difference to buff strike damage by 10% AND make up for the 20% HS loss from the glyph not activating.
So either

A) Frostfire Bolt & Desecration don't activate the glyph on bosses

or, more likely,

B) Infected Wounds does activate the glyph.



One more thing to think about. I was doing some PTR tests earlier on the Silvermoon training dummy. The only other person attacking it was a combat Rogue, and he had the blade twisting talent which dazes the target for 8 seconds. I didn't SS Recount enough to "prove" it, but I'm 99% sure it was also activating the glyph. Now I know the dummy is just plain susceptible to snares, so does anyone know if that debuff procs on bosses? Same with the Destro Warlock talent Aftermath. I doubt either do, but it's something to look for in case for some reason they do.

Dummys (even the boss dummy) are all snareable, therefore this doesn't say anything. And yes in didn't think of infected wounds (not too familiar with druid tanking)

I would guess Mind Flay would trigger the glyph as well although I've got no idea how much time S.Priests channel it in their rotation.

Infected wounds is an interesting one, but I believe that it will be absent from a PVE DPS or Tanking spec for ferals, as it doesn't buff their dps. Also, I don't think Slow, Hamstring or Chains of Ice are worth mentioning for PVE purposes, as they are unlikely to ever be used on a raid boss.

Mind flay is a definite possibility and may explain some of the massive swings in dps that I've been experiencing. I'll talk to our priests tonight.

Now, none of this is going to force me out of blood by any means - we don't have an enhancement shaman or survival hunter right now, so I'm providing Abom's Might. However, for anyone trying to choose their raiding spec, I think a useful recommendation for them is to check if they have a FFB mage (or shadow priest?) before choosing blood.

Any other (practical) raid debuffs that count as a snare?

Chains of Ice will actually work on bosses, they simply won't be slowed. There were some rough tests in this thread testing this versus Sartharion. The conclusion was that while Sartharion wasn't slowed by Chains of Ice, the glyph still functioned.

Blood DPS App. Stn. - Don't Stop Diseasin' (Feat. Runic Power Mastery).mp3

It seems fairly likely that so long as the debuff can be applied, whether or not it is effective, the glyph will function. It's also likely that the heroic training dummy acts properly as a boss target, though we would have to compare whether both bosses and heroic dummies can receive a hamstring debuff.

On live it only copies MH weapon. As far as dmg I am not sure if it still applies the dmg of both weapons even though you only see one. I was just fooling around while farming when I did it. Was not a test of how it would work. I have not tried it on the PTR but I would assume its the same.

I am also positive that it is 50% of all dmg.

I think Chains of Ice sticks to bosses because it applies a second "aura" that bosses aren't immune to, check the effects here.
I'm pretty sure any snare without a secondary effect won't stick. That's a bit beside the point though since the snare really needs to be part of a class / specs normal rotation for it to suit our needs.

So here's my question for the people that have been running test's (PTR is currently not working for me)


Concerning the last 2 points you have in a 51/0/18 spec. What in your opinion is the best way to allocate those remaining points to min\max dmg output?

Outbreak 0/2
BCB 0/3
or Runic Power Mastery for DRW up-time 0/2

20% damage on Plague Strike which you will be using only once per rotation compared to the alternatives is fairly weak and Outbreak is not widely considered a viable option for Blood/Unholy Sub-spec. 2/2 RPM is worth 6 seconds on DRW every time you use it (30/5=6). When I was playing with a "disease-full" rotation, 3/3 BCB was ~3-4% of my overall damage (for the sake of this comparison you can assume BCB is worth 1% per point). In Ulduar we are not going to have 2 to 3 minute gib fights right off the bat so we will be able to use DRW at least three times per fight in most cases.

I'm having a hard time believing that ~2% from BCB would be better than the DRW duration gained from RPM in the long run.

6 seconds of 120 ap is what, about 30% uptime for blood? So an average of 36 ap for your range slot... with the current sad state of blood sigil itemisation I have trouble believing we wouldn't be better off just being able to just use throwing weapons or guns or something. Would save a whole lot of itemisation headaches too.

Its quiet possible the heartstrike glyph will (haven't been able to get my hands on it to test). The issue here, obviously, is you then need to use 2 glyph slots for your 20% bonus damage on 1 ability, so whether its worthwhile seems pretty questionable.

I did some testing on that and posted my results back on page 42 which went largely unnoticed but I would venture Infected Wounds does NOT in fact proc the glyph of blood strike. I'd like to see some data on Slow.

Blood DPS App. Stn. - Don't Stop Diseasin' (Feat. Runic Power Mastery).mp3

Well in reality 12-14 swings isn't nearly enough to generalize. You could have just been on the bad end of the RNG for a little while. I could have sworn I saw some other tests here involving IW but I can't seem to find it now. Either way, I'm pretty sure IW does count for the glyph.

Sorry if this was mentioned before, but I didnt see this anywhere on the last few pages. In some 5 minute tests I did, Chilblains was activating the Blood Strike glyph on the boss dummy. I dont have any screenshots available unfortunately, but there was a sharp increase (>15%) in Blood Strike's damage with the Blood Strike glyph and Chilblains on the dummy.

Like it's said above all snares work on dummys, but only some can be applied to bosses, the deciding factor seems to be if the snare has a secondary effect or not.

TLDR: dummys are not a good idea to test this

Pls, delete. Wrong thread.