I am also fairly sure that it deals damage based on the actual white damage of your hit which is of course subject to glancing blows. That would account for variation as well.

@ Lushen: I didnt want to quote your post, but in my opinion, your used too low stats. I already have 1450 strength unbuffed.

I am more interested how blood will scale in ulduar gear so i assmued especially having much more strength.
I used the same Calculator, but worked with 1800 strength (because that will be more realistic in ulduar gear, probably getting new cloak/ring/neck with strength instead of agi). In my tests, i got hese results over 2000 hours:

1800STR, 900 Crit, 280 Hit, 23 Haste, 600 AP.

Strength	1.44
Arm.Pen.	1.35
Crit	0.92
Haste	0.72

So looks like overall, STR > Arm.Pen. >> Crit > Haste. Haste will still be very weak.

So I ran a bunch of sims with various MaxPen setups. Findings:

Even with every scrap of ArmPen I could find (900+), ArmPen never passes Str in value...per Kahorie's sim.

(edit: methods saw similar results on his own; he speculates that this is because the more ArmPen you have, the more valuable Str is too...so ArmPen will never catch Str; makes sense to me)

That would not lead to variation because 20% of 1000 + 20% of 700 is still 20% of the result. The partial resists could be an explanation though. Does anyone know the math behind partial resists to see if that is the variation?

The final Heart Strike takes place approximately 15.5 seconds into the rotation, before any diseases drop. There is a fair amount of leeway for latency or mistakes in that margin. Making mistakes so severe that Heart Strike is used without diseases would not warrant 2/2 Epidemic, but practice on the part of the player making the mistakes.

@Lushen: In your EP sims, which one were you using for your posted "Avg dps"? It needs to be the first one, since the subsequent sims represent tests run with +50 of the tested stat. It's interesting if you're right that the T7 bonuses are still slightly better (I'm guessing it's the crit % on the 2pc), but since the stats are better on the T8, it's still an upgrade for Blood.

Also, the value of Clockwork Legplates vs. Plated Leggings of Ruination depends entirely on how much hit you have on your other pieces of gear, especially once we're at BiS. If you need the hit, then Clockwork are definitely amazing, just like Staggering Legplates for entry-level Naxx. The amount of Str achievable on the PLoR leads me to believe they'll usually be better, but they are both really good.

Edit: The "sweet spot" for Armor Pen (not sure how you derived it) will be based on the possible combinations of Str and ArP on available gear, not on an arbitrarily chosen value. I think the term is pretty misleading.

I reached the same conclusion last night after running a lot of sims to test the value of Armor Pen. Armor Pen makes all your primary dps stats better, but this means that Strength consistently gets weighted more heavily at achievable levels of Armor Pen. It probably won't ever be beneficial to deliberately stack or gem Armor Pen at the expense of Strength.

One other point-- as Kahorie will tell you in the sim thread, the EP values should be taken with a heaping bowl of salt. I was graphing out my sims last night to try to have a clear illustration of the effects of Armor Pen, but the stat ratios and changes as ArP increased were never completely consistent. Part of this is because of the method the sim uses to calculate EP, as tetracycloide mentioned, but it's also because Armor Pen makes Attack Power better per point, and AP is used as the baseline (1.0) to which all the other stats in that particular EP ranking are relative.

While the EP totals vary, the main thing I took away was a basic dps stat ranking for Blood 3.1:

1) Strength
2) Armor Pen
3) Crit rating
4) Haste rating (often quite close to crit)
5) Attack Power
6) Agility

Hit and Expertise aren't on there, because we know that you should be capped or very close to it. Assigning them an EP value isn't as useful, since it's based on an average damage increase over a significant period of time, which will vary more widely over a short fight. Hit and Exp don't directly increase your damage so much as reduce the chance you'll deviate from your maximum possible damage.

So Armor Penetration can be only better than strength, when you have a certain amount of strength.

Assuming i have 300 Armor Penetration and 1800 strength (which won't be unrealistic in ulduar equip), i get:

AttackPower	100
Strenght	327
CritRating	186
HasteRating	159
ArmorPenetrationRating	318
WeaponDPS	2272

So you see that already in Ulduargear, its possible that armor penetration may keep up to strength.

This clearly includes that in t9 equip, APr might push ahead.

Maybe...in some kind of contrived setup with tons of Str and amost no ArmPen....or it could be asymtotal (becoming ever closer, but never equaling). Neither is very interesting though....not like non-linear scaling of ArmPen with regard only to itself would have been.

The spec you linked is just one point off from one I've been running simulations with. You can move the point in Improved Blood Presence to Impurity to get what I have.

Anyway, using Kahorie's simulator, 44/0/27 lags a little bit behind 51/0/20 in dps. It certainly looks like it would be easier to play though, since you don't have to worry about summoning DRW and the ghoul every minute and a half. Also, better AoE thanks to Unholy Blight.

It isnt asymtotal. Strength gets weaker the more attackpower you have. And theres simply one point, where strength gets weaker than armor penetration (as long as you dont have too much), Playing with 2400 strength (which should be t9 niveau), armor penetration is ahead.

But thats only theoretical. Strength will be always considered better - because it is for almost every dk really the case. Even if strength falls slightly behind, i wouldnt gem for it because there probably won't be for a long time the gear that this will matter.

edit: Same conditions as above, but with 2400 strength,i get by the same calculator:

AttackPower	100
Strenght	288
Agility	130
CritRating	207
HasteRating	173
ArmorPenetrationRating	319
WeaponDPS	2000

I have a feeling this is due to a couple of abilities: Death Coil, DRW, and temp ghoul. Strength benefits all of those, whereas ArP doesnt.

The point at which ArP moves extremely close to Str. I ran a few other sims with lower ArP (350ish) and ArP was still a noticeable distance behind. It wasnt until I plugged in at least 500 ArP that it finally (nearly) caught up to Str.

Well, one thing to keep in mind is Fallen Crusader. Last time I checked, after nearly an hours worth of data of boss testing data, Proculas showed its PPM somewhere around 4.2 - 4.5 procs per minute. As youve shown, its likely that many Blood DKs will be sporting ~1800 str unbuffed. With raid buffs, that will easily get pushed to ~2100-2200. Then add in 15% from Fallen Crusader being up somewhere around 60% of the time, if not more. Thats very very close to 2400 str.

Well easier to play is not the worst while learning new bosses.. I agree that AoE doesn't matter for trash, but pure single target DPS (Boss-Dummy) is not what counts for me in order to value a Spec, although it helps rating. At the moment i'm analyzing the Ulduar bosses to identify where AoE might improve overall DPS, which means damaging the Boss while having to fight Adds (Freya, Kologarn's arms, Auraya off the top of my Head).

So it's additional AoE in Add-Fights (what i call side dmg) vs. an increase of direct single target dps..

Do you have some DPS numbers for me? Maybe also some AoE numbers?

EDIT: second thoughts about it: 50/0/21 is superior in most ways since we are not trading Blood Gorged vs. perma ghoul, only blood gorged vs. additional 60% uptime of the ghoul. 44/0/27 seems off the table, which leaves UB vs DRW for boss analysis and AoE effectiveness

A comment on the DRW Vs. UB debate, through everything that has been available on the PTR (12/14 bosses have been tested minus Yogg-Saron and Algalon) I have not encountered a situation where I would rather have UB over DRW. Trash does matter, but Ulduar trash is not the AOE zerg-fest that we've seen so far. Yes, DRW got balanced but it is still a great talent, and certainly much better than UB for Blood players.

If on the far and off chance that UB does come out on top, Blizzard will re-evaluate DRW since we shouldn't be opting a 21 point talent over the 51 in our primary tree (ex. Gargoyle changes).

According to new Blizzard-posted patch notes, DRW attack speed has been changed from 2.0 to 3.5. I guess we'll have to wait for PTR servers to come up to see if the melee damage range changes along with it, or if it is a flat nerf. Considering that unholy & blood are fairly close in current PTR dps, I cant really see why a straight nerf would be warranted.

Question regarding DRW mechanics: Would a 3.5 attack speed be a buff or a nerf? If it's strikes mimic ours, then it's a slight nerf to it's white damage. If not, and it's own distinct damage / DPS / Weapon Speed stats then I would venture a guess it's a buff, as a slower weapon will do more damage via strikes.

Well, on test atm unbuffed, DRW's max melee crit is 2817 to my 4275, it's heart strike max crit is 1416 to my 5585 and it's death strike max crit is 1416 to my 7863.

A quick look at the log shows it's swing timer at 3.2 ish

4/10 20:47:41.488 SWING_DAMAGE,0xF130006CF500DF47,"Rune Weapon",0x2111,0xF130007F230025E9,"Highlord's Nemesis Trainer",0x10a28,2450,2449,1,0,0,0,1,nil,nil

4/10 20:47:44.527 SWING_DAMAGE,0xF130006CF500DF47,"Rune Weapon",0x2111,0xF130007F230025E9,"Highlord's Nemesis Trainer",0x10a28,915,914,1,0,0,0,nil,1,nil

4/10 20:47:47.793 SWING_DAMAGE,0xF130006CF500DF47,"Rune Weapon",0x2111,0xF130007F230025E9,"Highlord's Nemesis Trainer",0x10a28,2400,2399,1,0,0,0,1,nil,nil

Maybe the change hasn't happened yet ?

What? Could you elaborate a bit, please? I was under the impression that Spellpower- and AP-Coefficient remain fixed regardless of how much Strength you sport. One Strength equals 2 AP ("basic" melee benefit; untalented value without runeforging, you figure it out), 14 AP equal 1 White DPS, xx AP equal 1 Spellpower and so on. I can't see any mechanic in where going from 1000 Str to 1001 Str is any more benefit when compared to going from 4000 Str to 4001 Str.

What DOES change, however, is the relative value of ArP, thats right. As you say, there can be a certain point where gaining 1 ArP is better than gaining 1 Str, thats right. That is because ArP increases in Value the more strength you have. But i am not aware of any diminishing returns on Strength.

Question in regard to Blood Gorged:

(short version:) Is Vampiric Blood better than 1/2 Improved Blood Presence?

(long version:) The Specs in the 3.1 FAQ all include Vampiric Blood and 0/2 Improved Blood Presence and I wonder why. As far as I know Vampiric Blood increases your max health for its duration but your health percentage stays the same in the moments when you gain/lose the buff. This effect alone does not help DPS (unless you would die when not using VB).
Now you also gain increased healing for the duration which helps Blood Gorged uptime. But IBP increases healing permanently. If VB is used on cooldown you get an average healing increase of 5.83%, more than the 5% of IBP, but I think that this would probably result in being healed more than necessary while under VB and gaining nothing from the talent in the other 5/6 of the time.

Granted, this is probably a minor point but still something that bothers me.

The DRW speed nerf already went through back when we were all complaining that it's damage dropped way down. They just documented the change in the patch notes.

Do Bloodworms still 'eat' aoe heals? I'm not quite sure if they are useful for raids. They don't do much damage, but it's better than Mark of Blood or Vampiric Blood.

This is going to be pretty moot now that Blood uses Death Strike. As it was, most things that actually did damage to you in a DPS situation tended to knock your health well below 75% in one shot, and required pretty big heals (Death Strike, Rune Tap, healer) to get back up over. The only real grind downs were self-Hysteria when you didn't have any AOE healing or hots on the raid at all, Sapphiron's aura and 10-man Twilight Torment. With aura and Torment, it's a losing battle to stay above 75% if you don't do something active. You might hold it off for a tick or two, but that's it.

Now with Death Strike, self-Hysteria should no longer *ever* take you below 75%. Likewise, if your healers won't keep you topped off on the others, you can Death Strike and now not feel so bad about it.

These results set appear to reveal a flaw in the sim design. Can anyone explain why the raito of strength to AP changes? Given a fixed set of buffs and a fixed spec Strength should always add the same amount of AP per point i.e. 100/327 should be equal to 100/288 but it is obviously not.