I've been doing a good amount of testing recently on the PTRs, with an extended session last night.
Spec'd 51/2/18 I was doing just under 2500 DPS to a boss dummy over 10 minutes, no buffs, DRW / Hysteria used on cooldown, Glyphs of DRW, Obliterate and Dark Death.
BiS gear or 2nd BiS using an Armageddon (next BoH is mine!). Rotation of IT -> PS -> HS -> HS -> DS -> Dump -> HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DS -> Dump
This is on a boss dummy with none of the external buffs they were adding.
I then tried out Frost, speccing 17/51/3 and was sustaining just under 3000 DPS on a boss dummy, no buffs, using Deathchill / Unbreakable Armor macro every 2 minutes. Glyphs of Frost Strike, Icy Touch and Obliterate.
Identical gear to my Blood test. Rotation of PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> OB -> Dump (FS) -> OB / FS until diseases die
I only detail the Frost stuff as someone might be interested despite this being the Blood thread.
My tests showed my personal DPS almost 500 higher, sustained, with Frost than Blood. If I had tested Unholy this would probably have been higher still.
I've been doing a good amount of testing recently on the PTRs, with an extended session last night.
Spec'd 51/2/18 I was doing just under 2500 DPS to a boss dummy over 10 minutes, no buffs, DRW / Hysteria used on cooldown, Glyphs of DRW, Obliterate and Dark Death.
BiS gear or 2nd BiS using an Armageddon (next BoH is mine!). Rotation of IT -> PS -> HS -> HS -> DS -> Dump -> HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DS -> Dump
This is on a boss dummy with none of the external buffs they were adding.
I then tried out Frost, speccing 17/51/3 and was sustaining just under 3000 DPS on a boss dummy, no buffs, using Deathchill / Unbreakable Armor macro every 2 minutes. Glyphs of Frost Strike, Icy Touch and Obliterate.
Identical gear to my Blood test. Rotation of PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> OB -> Dump (FS) -> OB / FS until diseases die
I only detail the Frost stuff as someone might be interested despite this being the Blood thread.
My tests showed my personal DPS almost 500 higher, sustained, with Frost than Blood. If I had tested Unholy this would probably have been higher still.
Just out of curiosity, why aren't you using the glyph of Death Strike? The nerf to DS was reverted so there should be no reason for a blood dk to not use DS as it's main UF strike. You would have had better results that way. Also unless I'm mistaken putting 2 points into rpm is useless with the nerf to drw. I would test with something like this.
Something I noticed today while doing a little PTR Dummy practice then (tentatively) confirmed that happens on live by looking at the WWS from last nights naax clear, is that DRW spawns in front of your target, netting it a few parries. The only info a quick search of this thread found is someone complaining it attacking from the front back in december, but there wasn't much more than that. I tested it a few more times on live, and it looks like it spawns in front of the dummies every time and my DRW got many parries on bosses in naxx that do not rotate at all. I tried backing up a large distance from the dummy - but still behind it - and summoning my DRW, but to no avail: it spawned in front of / inside of the dummy, and got parried.
However it appears that if you do not have a target it will spawn right beside you, so it makes the problem easily fixed by nesting DRW inside a macro:
Three tests using the macro show the DRW visually behind the target and no parries, so this seems to solve one of my issues with the spec. (Only done on Live Side)
Additionally, what value is being placed on the t7 4 piece bounus for blood spec going into uldar? I may have been doing the rotation wrong, but it seemed like there was a slight RP overflow with 4pc t7? I was using IT PS HSx2 DS --> DS HSx4. So that should be an extra 60 RP / min, or 1.5 death coils, but it felt like a GCD was missing to get the extra DC off.
Just out of curiosity, why aren't you using the glyph of Death Strike? The nerf to DS was reverted so there should be no reason for a blood dk to not use DS as it's main UF strike. You would have had better results that way. Also unless I'm mistaken putting 2 points into rpm is useless with the nerf to drw. I would test with something like this.
I did tests with the same build (51/2/18) and was getting about 3025-3060 dps with 4 pc t7, BoH, SoA, no EP on boss dummy, and the boss dummy at 0% (only using DRW and Hysteria). Significantly better than 2500, but certainly not what Im getting with Unholy (~3400-3500).
Glyphs were DS and Dark Death...3rd slot was left empty because Im not sure if Icy Touch or DRW glyphs would be better at this point.
Just out of curiosity, why aren't you using the glyph of Death Strike?
Brainfarted on that, sorry. Should have said Glyph of Death Strike over Glyph of Obliterate.
Originally Posted by Lushen
I did tests with the same build (51/2/18) and was getting about 3025-3060 dps with 4 pc t7, BoH, SoA, no EP on boss dummy, and the boss dummy at 0% (only using DRW and Hysteria). Significantly better than 2500, but certainly not what Im getting with Unholy (~3400-3500).
Glyphs were DS and Dark Death...3rd slot was left empty because Im not sure if Icy Touch or DRW glyphs would be better at this point.
Over what time frame was this? HoW? (I assume no from what you posted).
My weapon was worse (Armageddon) but also 4pc T7.5 using Greatness and Mirror as trinkets (now using Grim Toll over Mirror on live but my PTR char is old).
Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I'd be interested in other people's results too.
[Edit]
Just repeated my test, this time got just over what I got before, it was 2530 after 10 mins, same conditions as above.
And my weapon was worse than I thought, I thought I had Armageddon on PTR but I don't, I'm using [Cryptfiend's Bite].
Unbuffed stats are 3893 AP, 32.4% crit and hit-capped. Build was:
I did have HoW and full RP when I started the fight as well (I felt having full RP was accurate because I do the same thing on live). I used PS and IT before casting DRW, then 1x DS, 2x HS, Empowered Rune Weapon, etc etc.
As for my gear, Ive got 4 pc T7 but 2 of the pieces are from 10 man (gloves and legs). My trinkets were Greatness and Grim Toll, my rings were Ruthlessness and Titanium Impact Band (with 16 str gem), Bracers of Lost Sentiments (10 man gear), Verdungo's Barbarian Cord (10 man gear again) and Chestguard of the Recluse (16 str gem). Also had three 27 str JC gems.
Edit 2: Heres a screenshot of my dps with the exact same gear (glyphs were DS, Dark Death, and DRW). One thing to note...I used my 2nd hysteria late, so the DPS should be about 30-50 lower than it is (I was sustaining 3130-3170 very easily however). And the boss dummy was at full health, so necrosis WAS counting...and surprisingly, it was granting 1.9% of my DPS. So almost 1% per point for blood. Also, those are my stats completely unbuffed (however, the test was done with HoW on).
Edit 3: Heres the exact breakdown of damage.
Also, 6 of my Death Coils and 1 of my DRW's Death Coils were resisted so my overall damage should actually be a bit higher since those resists wont happen in a raid.
The 2 numbers you dont see listed are: Icy Touch: 25 casts, 26909 (1.7%) damage and Blood-Caked Strike: 12 total, 12549 damage (0.8%).
Unfortunately, all the Unholy tests Ive done on dummys have been 3400-3500 when the dummy was at 0%. So Blood doing 3150ish WITH necrosis while Unholy does 3400-3500 WITHOUT necrosis is troubling.
Unfortunately, all the Unholy tests Ive done on dummys have been 3400-3500 when the dummy was at 0%. So Blood doing 3150ish WITH necrosis while Unholy does 3400-3500 WITHOUT necrosis is troubling.
Straight up comparing Blood to unholy on Test dummies isn't the most fair comparison. Unholy is "self debuffing" providing their own crypt fever and 13% Spell debuff while most of their damage comes from shadow/frost damage. Blood on the other hand 1) piggy backs off of unholy for crypt fever bounus, 2) does a much higher percentage of physical damage than unholy, while NOT providing the primary raid debuff, IE sunder/expose. Even with the necrosis discrepancy, its not realistic to expect blood and unholy to provide very similar numbers on training dummies AND in raids.
A better "ballpark" figgure would be to get a warrior to sunder the dummy for you(but no BS!), then do the blood test. Of course unholy benefits from sunder and we benefit from 13% SD, but at much lower rates relatively.
True, but Blood does get Abom's Might. Certainly nowhere near as powerful as EP is for Unholy...but nonetheless, its something. Still...300-400 dps difference between Blood and Unholy is troubling. If we could get 10 seconds on the DRW glyph, that would go a long way to fixing Blood's problems.
And thanks for the DRW macro, it did seem to help. DRW's melee hits had 11.1% Dodged and 2.8% Parried unfortunately (5 in 36 hits)...but only 2 Dodges (and 0 Parries) in 36 Heart Strikes and no Dodges or Parries in 11 Death Strikes. Not bad at all.
True, but Blood does get Abom's Might. Certainly nowhere near as powerful as EP is for Unholy...but nonetheless, its something. Still...300-400 dps difference between Blood and Unholy is troubling.
I am not worried about the 300 dps difference. The first reason is that some gear setup and gemming bring more to some specs compared to others. The second reason is that blood and unholy do not scale the same way in a raid setting.
Typically I have always found blood to do worse in dummy dps tests compared to unholy, whereas in a raid setting it was way ahead in all short fights.
My main concern, since we have two specs that we can use in a raid (if we wanted to), is how blood will perform against frost in sustained damage, in a raid setting. I will personally choose unholy in trash situations and blood/frost in single target dps.
I was wondering if any of you had tried to see if the glyph of disease also refreshed the DRW diseases?
Would it be possible that prioritizing having 4 diseases up on a boss (since that now we have to use diseases as blood) could make us match the difference between unholy and blood?
Could anyone try that out please? I believe it could change our way of playing blood and could boost us quite nicely.
Comparing Blood vs Unholy or Frost on a dummy is useless, don't do it unless you can get the dummy sundered.
We can take it a step further and state flatly that boss dummy comparisons of DPS are only relevant for changes in gear, not spec, and even then are only conclusive after hours of testing and not for every aspect of damage output. All of the 'I did XXXXDPS as blood, XXXXDPS as frost, and XXXXDPS as unholy on the boss dummy' posts are so fundamentally flawed they're completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters for raiding specs is raid buffed DPS vs. raid buffed DPS. Raid buffs do not add the same amount of damage to every spec so baseline self buffed DPS is not a valid comparison. It would be a step forward in legitimacy for this thread to no longer entertain arguments based on boss dummy DPS alone.
well u have to keep in mind that blood scales much better in raid than unholy, so boss doll aint that much of a pointer how much blood spec does dmg/dps
We can take it a step further and state flatly that boss dummy comparisons of DPS are only relevant for changes in gear, not spec, and even then are only conclusive after hours of testing and not for every aspect of damage output. All of the 'I did XXXXDPS as blood, XXXXDPS as frost, and XXXXDPS as unholy on the boss dummy' posts are so fundamentally flawed they're completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters for raiding specs is raid buffed DPS vs. raid buffed DPS. Raid buffs do not add the same amount of damage to every spec so baseline self buffed DPS is not a valid comparison. It would be a step forward in legitimacy for this thread to no longer entertain arguments based on boss dummy DPS alone.
While comparing specs on the dummy is probably NOT useful, comparing the same (or similar) specs between the PTR and Live servers would be vaiid, at least as far as comparing changes.
Also, saying "N spec has been nerfed and is now useless!" is only valid if every other class is routinely outDPSing us.
Tastes like Awesome, because it's made of Awesome(TM)
Like tetracycloide said, I view DPS on a training dummy as, well, training. It gives you an outlet to practice your rotation, and if done over reasonable periods of time and with enough samples, allows you to measure your improvement. To be honest, a 6 minute patchwerk fight isn't necessarily the best means of measuring your dps, either. What it all comes down to is comparing a similar fight with a similar fight. There are too many variables (duration, rng, movement, raid damage, aoe) in raid encounters to view any given fight as a means by which to say "i do more damage than you."
The only time comparisons are every really valid are if you have a control set and an isolated variable.
At the same time, the dummies can provide you a baseline, and as you upgrade your gear, you can eventually develop an idea of what level a specific spec can perform in a raid based on dummy damage. You can't really compare it to another spec's dummy dps and say it's better or worse though, there are too many unknowns.
Like tetracycloide said, I view DPS on a training dummy as, well, training. It gives you an outlet to practice your rotation, and if done over reasonable periods of time and with enough samples, allows you to measure your improvement. To be honest, a 6 minute patchwerk fight isn't necessarily the best means of measuring your dps, either. What it all comes down to is comparing a similar fight with a similar fight. There are too many variables (duration, rng, movement, raid damage, aoe) in raid encounters to view any given fight as a means by which to say "i do more damage than you."
The only time comparisons are every really valid are if you have a control set and an isolated variable.
At the same time, the dummies can provide you a baseline, and as you upgrade your gear, you can eventually develop an idea of what level a specific spec can perform in a raid based on dummy damage. You can't really compare it to another spec's dummy dps and say it's better or worse though, there are too many unknowns.
I referenced this concept once before about using PW as a benchmark for DPS, but there is useful data to be obtained from dummies, as long as you know what you are looking at, such as:
- How well some spec will perform with a lack of raid buffs. Especially for people running 10-mans, it's not inconceivable that come raid buffs will be missing.
Tastes like Awesome, because it's made of Awesome(TM)
Has anyone started looking at the Tier 8 set bonus' and weighed them against the other random gear dropping in Ulduar that would generally reach much more ArP and possibly a bit more AP?
Basically, are the Tier 8 sets and bonus' worth going after for Blood?
Has anyone started looking at the Tier 8 set bonus' and weighed them against the other random gear dropping in Ulduar that would generally reach much more ArP and possibly a bit more AP?
Basically, are the Tier 8 sets and bonus' worth going after for Blood?
So far, I think yes. Using stat weightings based on my current gear (via the DK simulator)*, I'm seeing the T8 helm, shoulders, and chest as best-in-slot based on the items discovered so far on the PTR (which DO NOT include some hard mode drops, YS/Alg drops, etc), and the gloves are quite good too. The T8 legs are blown away by the ilvl 239 Plated Leggings of Ruination, which are just absurdly good (insert 2 dragon's eyes for great justice).
So, yes, it appears the T8 4pc is worth going for right away, as the only items that would break it up are likely end-instance and hardmode drops.
*Note that these weightings don't account for wanting to be hit-capped, so hit isn't very highly valued. Take with a grain of salt.
Edit: I should note I'm talking about 25-man gear only here. I didn't find any 10-man items yet that were better.
All of the 'I did XXXXDPS as blood, XXXXDPS as frost, and XXXXDPS as unholy on the boss dummy' posts are so fundamentally flawed they're completely irrelevant.
I disagree. They are useful for live / PTR comparisons, as already stated, and can be an indication of something being very wrong (or very right). If tests showed Blood 1000 DPS behind Frost or Unholy, for example, that amount is not going to be offset by a simple application of Sunders or other raid buffs.
And don't forget that that Frost and Unholy will also gain from those Sunders and other associated raid buffs. Certainly not as much as Blood which is very much the most physical damage-oriented of all three specs, but Frost still uses Obliterate, Blood Strike and Plague Strike, all physical abilities, and Unholy will also use Blood Strike and Plague Strike.
In an ideal world I would be able to put whatever debuffs I wanted on a boss dummy and go to town but unfortunately that isn't possible.
To be honest I think the easiest way to do all of this would just be to auto-debuff boss dummies with typical raid buffs, as they were doing a few days ago. Have it with Sunders, Ebon Plague, spell hit, etc. This would allow for more meaningful comparisons.
To be honest I think the easiest way to do all of this would just be to auto-debuff boss dummies with typical raid buffs, as they were doing a few days ago. Have it with Sunders, Ebon Plague, spell hit, etc. This would allow for more meaningful comparisons.
Not really, because then it still doesn't take player raidbuffs into account.
This whole argument is kinda silly anyway since we all agree that dummy testing is not a good benchmark if you're looking for top raid dps.
I'm a bit torn between 3/3 Ravenous Dead vs. 3/3 BCB.
The voice in my head, as well as my PTR testing (sadly it is only on dummies) shows BCB pulling ahead even with "100%" ghoul uptime on a dummy.
Am I doing something wrong here? I'm following the standard rotation I've been using since beta. (DS -> IT -> PS -> HSx2 -> Dump -> HS x6 -> Dump -> Repeat.)
EDIT: Sorry for no screenshots showing BCB beating out RD, but PTR went down right as I was finishing up my RD test.
I would still like to incentivate people to look at recent WWS report like Leaflock's and notice the 9-10k Heart Strike crits.
Considering Blood's new rotation is gonna include 6x HS, considering said HS will autoprocc glyphed Death Coils and all that comes with that... I don't see how anyone can think the DRW nerf is more relevant than these buffs. I have a very hard time considering blood nerfed in 3.1 - obviously the buffs to Unholy don't help, because they make the best specc even better, but we need to look at Blood in a comparison between live and 3.1 more than with UH.
However it appears that if you do not have a target it will spawn right beside you, so it makes the problem easily fixed by nesting DRW inside a macro:
Three tests using the macro show the DRW visually behind the target and no parries, so this seems to solve one of my issues with the spec. (Only done on Live Side)
I was testing out blood on the PTR when I remembered reading this same post earlier in the day. I added the above text to my macro that also includes Blood Fury and Hysteria. It was still summoning the Rune Weapon in front of the boss dummy. I simplified things and just made a macro for DRW with the above text. I experienced the same results + I had to hit the macro twice for the /targetlasttarget to kick in. Thinking that maybe I had screwed something up that wasn't obvious to me I deleted all the text in the macro and copy/pasted yours exactly, but am still summoning the Rune Weapon in front of the boss dummy. Any ideas?
[Edit] I just noticed that you mentioned that you had only tested this on live. >_< Perhaps the best recourse is just to report it as a bug on the PTR?
04/01/09, 8:27 PM
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