Well then..

Currently, I am raiding as Blood DPS, dual wield.

Currently spec'd as this.

Rotation:

IT, PS, HS, HS, DC, OBLIT

IT, PS, HS, HS, HS, HS, DC

Notes:

Lead with IT 'cause I like to pull mobs to me as well as because of plague strike glyph.

I play in Unholy pres. for reduced GCD in order to take advantage of Death Trance procs and excess RP.


DPS for single targets is on par with similarly geared Warriors, Ret Paladin, Hunter, Rogue et al and ahead of 2H Blood DKs, gear for gear.



Survivability is high.

Fun factor is THROUGH THE ROOF.

I've never gone for cookie cutter builds, maybe that makes me a noob, but this is way more fun than any 2H build.

Not to be rude or anything, but any similarly geared 2h Blood DK should blow you out of the water on DPS. Blood has no talents that are based around auto attacks and the strikes, Obliterate and Heart Strike, are both physical and weapon damage based. They wouldn't scale very well at all with DW. I'm not saying not to run DW Blood if you enjoy it, just that it shouldn't be out DPSing 2h Blood.

Guess I bend reality then.

The difference in HS damage between myself and a 2H wielding isn't nearly as dramatic as the 30% gain in white damage that I get from DW.

We'll see how I feel about the spec in a couple months tho.

I am a level 80 blood DK, and there are a few problems i have seen with the spec and rotations posted. My current spec is 56/13/2. I skipped glacier rot, and instead put those 2 points into black ice. That way, with the plague strike glyph, i start with IT, which gets a 12% dmg bonus instead of 10% with PS first, and now that the enemy has frost fever, they take 20% more damage from ps. Second, i feel for raiding glyph of rune tap and full speccing into runetap is completely necessary. Let me explain. Blood DK's do 10% more dmg as long as you have 75% of your total hp. So, in essence, it is very important to stay at full hp throughout a boss fight. Not only does improved runetap heal yourself for 20% of your total hp, but with the glyph it heals your whole party for 10%(maybe 20% as well, haven't looked into it) but since most buffs are raid wide buffs now, if you put a Blood DK into the tank group, every 30 seconds they can be healed for 10% of their total hp. You have no idea how many wipes i have saved already from this, and the loss in dps isnt that much. Also, 13 points in frost is a given, because annhiliation is huge for blood, as you can finish off your first rotation while letting FF and BP hit their final tics, not to mention the 3% crit. I put the last 2 points into morbidity, since you will use DC alot more than IT, and 10% more damage helps more than another 12% frost dmg, or 6% PS crit. The rotation I use is

IT>PS>OB>HS>HS>DC
IT>PS>HS>HS>HS>HS

Obviously, DC right after sudden doom procs. I have found if you dont, you could be wasting sudden dooms, even if it messes up the rotation a tad. If you have DRW, use it, other wise if you have time dump your runic power into DC's. This spec might not be top dps, but it is top survivability and its improved runetap brings an incredibly useful utility to a raid, and im sure your raid leader will want you for every run.

Well, let's do some quick math on it. Generally, about 23% of a blood Dk's dmg is white damage. So, a 30% increase is roughly another 8%, meaning you now do 31-32% white damage. HS generally accounts for about 37% dmg and OB is around 8-9%, or about 45% of your total damage. Since a 1H has half the weapon damage of a 2H, then that means half of your damage from HS and OB is now gone, resulting in a 22% loss of dps, and thats not including loss of dps from DRW and PS. DW can work, but not in blood spec.

My usual badge farming group has evolved into 3 DKs and 2 Paladins (yeah, we like plate drops), so I switched to Blood spec from Unholy to not conflict with our other Unholy DK. Anyway, I recently picked up [Incisor Fragment] on a Drak run, and am trying to judge its usefulness. Previously I ignored armor pen since it's nigh useless for Unholy, but with Blood doing so much more physical damage I'm wanting to try and measure the effectiveness of its use effect.

The DPS compendium mentions offhand that ArP isn't very good except for Blood, but doesn't offer me any hard value. Passive AP aside, how effective is ArP from the use effect for a trinket slot? Also, does DRW benefit from *all* our stats, including ratings? If so, it seems like stacking the ArP effect on DRW and then hammering Oblit/HS would make it worth the effort.

Your numbers are wrong...

White Damage is more than 23% of a blood DK's damage, for starters.

Secondly, 2h weapons are not twice the damage of a 1h. It's around 75% harder hitting.

Meaning for a heart strike with no gear at all and no diseases (using tool tip numbers only) and no talent buffs


1H HS: 435.4

2H HS: 600.4

Meaning a 1H HS hits about 73% as hard as a 2H HS, on average.

NOT HALF.


So, add in the 30+% additional white damage and what do you get?

Well you get two specs that are remarkably close to eachother.

I said I beat the 2H blood DKS, I didn't say I blew them out of the water. We're talking about 50-100dps differences here. (Also, I don't have an epic offhand, just MH)

Sounds like Blizzard made them pretty damned equal to me.


Notes: Weapons used are Titansteel Bonecrusher and Titansteel Destroyer, both with damage averaged (Min + Max / 2)

Also, in case you're tempted to bring chance to hit into the equation, it's pathetically easy to remain hit capped for specials as a DK and then some, so really a non-issue.

It's actually closer to 71.5% after you work in normalization and so on, but essentially yes. That means all of your strikes deal approximately 40% more damage as 2H than as 1H with equivalent gear. 30% higher autoattack damage does not outweigh 40% higher strike damage unless strikes are a small minority of your damage.

We've had the content down for the last 2 weeks, and I have to say... 51/13/7 is terrible. Dancing Rune Weapon is probably the worst talent in the history of the game, due to it constantly attacking from the front and receiving a ridiculous number of parries on bosses such as Patchwerk and Malygos... I respecced 50/0/21, and my DPS and lack of Parry Gibbing the tank is rather nice.

It looks like mine usually attacks from the rear, but it's troubling to think it would attack from the front. I assumed it used the same pet logic all other pets in the game use...

I may think about ditching it..

Patchwerk doesn't parry gib.

If you're attacking from behind (like any good Melee DPS does) and you cast DRW, it should not (and I have never noticed it doing it) move to the front and attack.

When I pop my Incisor fragment, Hysteria on myself (yes, i know everyone says it should go on the highest physical DPS but as a physical DPS build, I find justification in putting it on myself), DRW, cast a ghoul, etc etc etc... my DPS skyrockets and on heroic bosses (haven't done any 25s yet and I frost tank 10s) I usually top meters by a large margin (except when there's a pesky hunter in the group). This is with a 51/13/7 build. I am considering going 51/0/20 for BCB/Necrosis/strength talents, and keeping DRW cause I love it. I never had a problem with my DRW parry gibbing on Malygos.

Calling a spec terrible just because you haven't had good experience with it or, more bluntly, suck at it (not saying you do, that's just an 'if'), isn't really a fair thing to do. Plenty of people on these forums can counter your arguments.

51/13/7 doesn't suck, 50/0/21 doesn't suck either.

They are both good spec's, they both do a great amount of damage. Once people start capping in epics you'll see a much bigger difference in 51/13/7 though.

I wouldn't be the least suprized if gargoyle is nerfed in the near future too, or DRW buffed. If a 21 point talent is even close to a 51 point talent in a high DPS tree, then there is something wrong.

[edit] For the sake of dps analysis, why are you specing blood aura rather than bloodworms?

I have been a lurker for a a bit now. I am not the most gifted player but I wanted to chime in on the 51/13/7 - 50/0/21 debate. I think a lot of it honestly comes down to your personal play style. I have a friend who plays 50/0/21 he does roughly the same dps as I do using 51/13/7. After reading all these threads last night I tried 50/0/21. On the practice dummies I simply could not match his dps (or my old dps) I spent a couple hours trying different variations on casting order.. It just didn't work for me, the funny part.. he switched to my spec.. and the same was true for him.. he could not mach my previous dps. I think they just play slightly differently and both work for some players, and some only find their comfort zone in one of the specs. All the theory crafting in the world sometimes goes out of the window just because of player styles and comfort zones.

I leveled as a 50/0/21 build or something very akin to it. Being that Melee DPS tends to be 25-27% of my total dmg, Necrosis and BCB along with the extra STR %s added to my success. However, when I received more and more gear, i respecced 51/13/7 to see what all the hype was about. I quickly found out why.

5man statistics (on average):
2000-2500 DPS (depending on buffs such as imp might/gotw etc). Easily 25-2600 on bosses regardless of the lack of imp might etc.

10man stats (on average):
2600-2700 DPS..

Boss fights (where melee is great...Instructor Razuvious, Patchwerk):
3200-3600 DPS


The closest my friend could come to touching me in DPS in either of these situations, is ~300 DPS behind me with a 50/0/21 build. It seems the more gear one has, the better a 51/13/7 build scales. I think it is going to depend on play style more than anything.

I would like to make an inquiry about Haste vs ArP. My trinkets are the Mirror of Truth and Meteorite Whetstone. I've tested Mirror of Truth out in combination with Incisor Fragment as well as Dark Moon Card: Wrath, and the Whetstone comes out ahead ~150-200DPS. Most DKs I have encountered discounted haste, however, even though Blizzard has itemized things poorly in the past, I cannot help but look at our Tier gear as well as the heroic Sigil that adds Haste. If haste was such a bad stat then why go for it? I remember speaking with a Fury warrior who said ArP + Crit was much better, however when competing with a Fury Warrior who stacked Haste, the haste ended up beating him by about ~20DPS, in similar T6 gear (pre wrath of course). I'm always in Blood Presence as I've tried Unholy and found my rotations work just fine and I am never in a bind for what to use. If anyone has direct numbers relating to the ArP vs Haste argument I would be much obliged to have a look at them.

I've watched my DRW and it ALWAYS attacks from the rear. I've never once seen it attack from the front, ever.

I've put a lot of thought into it, and I have a really hard time imagining that anyone could weigh in Gargoyle as significantly better if at all better than DRW. DRW doesn't die, it scales amazingly and does a significant amount of damage in a short period of time. I've had a lot of problems as Unholy with my gargoyle dieing, (Though I do love it's corpse falling to the ground) not to mention DRW is just neat to watch. ANd yeah it doesn't instinctively go from the front at worst it attacks from where you are which most the time will be you on the rear.

no particular reason, was actually planning on changing that before raids tonight :P

You are correct, Niil. It's only that I didn't want to spend money on another respec that I haven't changed it again haha. Our OT is Frost specced so he takes care of the Improved Icy Touch part, otherwise I'd feel guilty gimping the raid. In the end, the difference between the 10 pre-requisite points in Frost are really, really trivial in comparison to our big hitting boys in Blood. But for the sake of optimizing DPS, I will explain my choice to not get Icy Reach below.

This is quoted from my original post, 2 pages back -

"Also, I opted for Toughness instead of Glacier Rot and Improved Icy Touch, and am using Glyph of Plague Strike. I like how you can IT from a distance before closing in with Plague Strike, but otherwise the damage difference should be marginal since the precursor 10 points to Annihilation are pretty much filler. "

If anything, I'd get 3/3 Improved Icy Touch and 2/5 Black Ice. As someone mentioned, having an IT be too far can definitely throw off your rotation when it comes to Frost Fever falling off before the 4th HS. If you're using Unholy Presence, that might be different though.

I pretty much agree with everyone saying that the difference between 51/13/7 and 50/0/21 might just be playstyle. I do notice DRW parrying and missing a lot though, so that does become troublesome (note that I am always behind the boss).

Just a quick question. I've been looking through some armories of folks here and I noticed a few had [Darkheart Chestguard] I'm not sure if they ahve it as a filler or.. But I recently got my shoulders and have enough badges for the gloves. I'm thinking that two piece set is really nice and would probably boost my dps by a good amout.

According to the DPS Bible that leather piece is better than my current [Engraved Chestplate of Eck] Is my napkin math correct assuming hit capped.

The problem with the Gargoyle is that while it's equal or superior to DRW, it's survivability is really atrocious. Having to mash a focus macro button so I can heal it with Death Coil is really annoying and it basically dies with or without DC healing on any fight that has some aoe. Moreover, as the garg eats all of your RP, you can't really use anything else but Sudden Doom Death Coils to heal it. As such, I'd consider them somewhat equal as the Gargoyle's liability is its poor survival even if it did more damage.