I have been wondering about Unholy Presence for DPS. Smashing through Runes quicker, means more opportunities to Death Coil and more special abilities you'll use in a given fight. Does that equal about 15%? Well that'll require testing.

So we're boned on the haste front then? It just buffs auto-attack damage?

Edit: Ah right...spell attacks. That'd mean about a 50% benefit, I imagine.

I've been testing different specs and out of all of them 51/13/7 is doing the best DPS on the boss dummy, but it still seems pretty underwhelming...

These numbers were from a 9 minute fight:
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/9146/recountcq2.jpg

Using Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver 1406-1698 weapon dmg (477.9DPS), 3.25 speed, 2975AP, 294 hit (8.97), 24.84% crit, 24 expertise (6.00%), 154 haste (yes I know this stat isn't great for us, I haven't stacked it on purpose)

2164 dps using a PS IT HS HS OB DC OB HS HS HS HS rotation, in Unholy Presence. Unholy has shown better dps for me every time I've tested it against Blood Presence.

I'm still looking for a scribe with glyph of obliterate, will it make that much of a difference? Are you guys seeing similar numbers? I just feel like I'm doing something wrong...

edit: Posted melee stats and updated armory link

No it isn't lol, where did you get this information from? Haste does not effect any of our abilities INCLUDING our spells. From my understanding we are considered a melee class, melee classes have never been effected by GCD. Just because we have what looks like spells doesn't mean they have to be effected by GCD.

And like I said ill bring in some stats while in naxx, because there is no problem with runic power generation from my experience.

err I misread your recount, so nevermind.

The obliterate glyph makes a big difference when your that spec, also gear makes a big part too.

Try using your SD procs after your HSs, if you are in unholy presence then you'll have enough time to take full advantage of that ( since that gives you the chance of procing SD again ). Also try to get a good rotation in with DRW, use ERW with it and dont let RP overflow.

EDIT: Also it would be a good idea to figure out a new rune power bar, and debuff watcher ( I have my rune/rp cooldown timer that cooldowns in the form of bars, and I have my debuff watcher right next to this cooldown timer, making it much easier to keep track of cooldowns / diseases ). Also it would be a good idea to get a mod that will play a sound when SD procs, it makes keeping track of sudden doom 1000x easier. All of this can be found at any current mod site.

I've been following all the unholy/frost dps topics, trying to figure out what kind of build will be best for me at 80. From what I gather, frost and unholy are fairly close, unholy being just a little bit in front in terms of dps. So I guess my question is does it come out to a preference or is unholy the way to go for dps?

So for the first two weeks of raiding on my DK I went as 51/13/7 and I was very disappointed with my damage. I tried everything I could to improve it, I just couldn't spend my runic power fast enough. I tried Unholy Presence and even though I was using all my runes and RP without a problem my DPS went even lower. So I decided to give 50/0/21 a try this week and wow did I ever see an improvement. People keep saying that DRW will out-scale the Gargoyle but honestly... my Gargoyle died quite often on bosses and my damage was still far better.

Wow Web Stats 25m Patchwerk WWS

Even if they nerf Gargoyle or gear gets to the point where DRW does out-scale it, is it possible that it would still be worth putting 20 points in Unholy as opposed to Annihilation?

If they nerf gargoyle or buff DRW in anyway, DRW will become the blood raiding spec imo. As of right now both specs are pretty even as far as damage output, depending on the player and gear. But once people start hitting higher epics and better weapons, DRW will scale much higher and faster then gargoyle.

I dont really see how your damage can be that low, maybe theres something wrong with how your spending your runes or how your using your cooldowns? Im in fairly decent gear and I can pull out 3500+ dps on most fights, higher if I get a good rotation in with DRW and SD procs.

What interests me is the difference in gear, you obviously have the better, I wish I could get a few peices you have and keep trying unholy, if my damage keeps going up I dont see myself ever leaving unholy presence.

My question was more would 51/0/20 be more DPS than 51/13/7 when DRW outdamages Gargoyle. From my experience the 20 in Unholy seems to outweigh the 13 in Frost.

As far as Unholy Presence, I tried it with 51/13/7 doing the same rotation over the same period of time on a target dummy and my DPS was by far lower with Unholy than it was with Blood Presence. I know target dummies aren't the perfect source of testing but I didn't have talents like Necrosis that won't overkill. I don't know, I haven't done extensive testing but I just don't see how UP could out-do Blood. :\

Oh, edited this since I misread your talent points, to tell you the truth I am not totally sure, since thats something we'll have to see if blizzard wants to change us.

And what rotation are you using? What was your dps? Because I can understand it may be lower for you, but you may be doing something wrong, because for me it works very well and Im putting out numbers equal to or better then most blood presence charts. Like I said in the above post you gotta take full advantage of SD procs and RP, you are capable of using them whenever you wish as long as you keep in line with the basic rules of DPSing. You also need to use DRW with ERW, that also makes a big difference in unholy presence. Unholy presence does extremely well when buffed too, since it will scale your DC up, making the ability to use it that much better.

Getting a mod that can play a sound or someway make tracking SD procs also helps extremely.

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if I was doing something wrong when I was spec'd 51/13/7, my damage was bad and I couldn't figure out why.

I was using the rotation as that spec was the one from the DPS Compendium:

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

I couldn't use my runic power fast enough without my runes collecting dust so I tried Unholy Presence to remedy it and it worked amazing. Everything went fine but as far as my tests on the target dummy went, my DPS was still lower than the same rotation as Blood.

As 50/0/21 I'm using the rotation posted a few pages back by Andoras in this thread.

What is the verdict on the Sigil of Haunted Dreams? Does it yield more of a dps boost than the Sigil of the Dark Rider or ney?

Yeah thats the problem, you are still in the mentality of a set rotation, when you can be much much more open to how you want to use your RP. You can pretty much use SD procs after every HS, as well as putting in any extra RP as needed during your rotation. The time you spend using RP and GCD on SD will even out the downtime you are having now. You gotta remember that SD has a 1 out of 5 chance of procing from every HS, so the faster you use SD then the higher chance of another SD proc ( which it does happen very often ).

As far as DRW goes, and using it in unholy:

hysteria + trinket + blood fury + DRW / obli / it / ps / hs / hs / rp - hs / hs / hs / hs / obli / RP - ERW / it / ps / hs / hs / hs / hs / rp

You can literally fit that all in the duration of DRW, and you almost need to be spamming your DC key just to keep up with RP ( which is pretty fun btw ). The reason I use the 50/0/21 rotation is because DRWs obliterates will eat its diseases, so you have to be aware of that, it sucks but in truth it really wont make that huge of a difference.

In the end its w/e fits your play style, I personally enjoy mine much better while still wrecking damage meters.

They truthfully need to add more white damage talents, to at least make haste more interesting, since 90% of all plate has haste on it. Makes me so sad seeing t7 with tons of haste rating >.>

I agree. For those of you who are just running the "blood presence >>>>>>> unholy presence" statement out there without actually testing it - I'm sorry, but you're all in for a surprise. My DPS is pretty much equivalent after toggling through the two presences throughout tons of 10-mans and heroics. Unholy, however, is exactly as jones says it is - you can squeeze ANYTHING into your rotation (especially SD procs), and never have to worry. In addition, you'll always hit quad Heart Strikes before your diseases fall off. It might end up becoming preference, but know that through my three weeks of playing Blood that the difference is marginal.

Unfortunately our guild needs an OT, so I will be speccing Unholy (w/ modded talents for tanking), since I don't really think I could do a Blood OT build without sacrificing too much. I will return to Blood when I can, or hopefully if they add more mitigation and avoidance talents into the Blood tree.

Cheers.

We had a pretty laggy night of raiding, but I'm gonna toss my WWS out here anyway. My gear obviously is quite good so far (except the damn helm) and well 2-4 second lagspikes are annoying like hell with a GCD heavy spec such as Blood.

Wow Web Stats

I did spike up to 5950 DPS during our first Patchwerk pull, but I got real lucky with my critrate there. I can say without a doubt I didn't even come close to this with 51/13/7...

I tried the 51/0/20 spec for our last heroic Nax clear. Figured I'd see how DRW fared for myself instead of what all I've read. Here is our WWS for our Patchwerk kill. Wow Web Stats

I have compared the numbers that DRW put out to the numbers a gargoyle puts out and really it doesn't seem like much of a competition right now. I know my gear isn't the greatest in the world, but it's far better than average I would think, and yet DRW still was pretty lack luster. I really don't see it out performing gargoyle until we get a whole new tier of gear and weapon available to us.

I'm reading a lot of posts here and I keep seeing people with a huge load of Heart Strikes in their rotation. Is this the norm for Blood DPS? Should I be completely smoking out an Unholy DK as Blood? I rarely destroy the Unholy DK in my guild, albeit always ~100 or so more DPS and ~200k or so more total damage done on single target fights.

My "rotation" is a little more something like this..

PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> OB -> BT -> OB -> OB -> HS

Also, I have found something interesting with BT;
If you Blood Tap with one blood rune up and four death runes down, the blood rune will turn into a death rune and actually refresh one of your other death runes. Not sure if this is common knowledge or not, just thought I'd shine light if it wasn't.
Undoubtedly unintended; at least, from what the Blood Tap tooltip states.

I haven't had trouble breaking 3K DPS in raids and haven't really had trouble being consistently first or second in damage over rogues, mages, warlocks and other death knights(Unholy dominates me on multi-target fights, as a given). Maybe my guild is just terrible but it seems like I'm doing just as much DPS as the rotations listed in this topic.

In fact, I wouldn't really call it a rotation. I only DC when I don't have any runes up(literally) or I have one death rune and am waiting for another to refresh (usually BT or aftermath of refreshing diseases). It's more so doing OB when I have two death (or U/F) up and HS when I have that one blood rune up(or when BT is down, I'll do two).

This is all assuming a single target fight and all cooldowns aren't being target into consideration.

Edit: I will try to upload a WWS sometime this week/sometime next if this post isn't completely shot down by someones undeniably correct information that my rotation is inferior.

There may be something I'm not quite getting, but why would the Gargoyle come at the expense of another ghoul? You can have both up at the same time.

In the interests of curiosity, I will be testing the 45/0/26 spec someone mentioned earlier which trades Blood Gorged for a permanent ghoul + Impurity. There is a chance the tradeoff may be worth it as if you look at some Unholy DK parses, the ghoul does 15% of their total damage, which would make up for the 10% bonus and expertise loss - however the spec does not have NotD to help keep the ghoul up.

Apologies if I didn't explain enough in my above post, but DRW mimics all actions performed by the Death Knight.

This includes summoning your Ghoul. Therefore, if you summon your Ghoul after activating DRW, you get 2 Ghouls.

I hope this clears up my point.

Has anyone tryed not taking Rune Tap and Mark of Blood to put two points into Bloodworms as Blood aura?

If you're looking for raw DPS, this is a good option, but bloodworms really don't bring much to the table over the fantastic raid utility that Mark of Blood and Rune Tap (coupled with Glyph) provide.

Mark of Blood is amazingly useful when your healers are doing it tough, mob enrage or some silly melee is attacking from the front.

Rune Tap is a handy little AoE heal, I personally have 3/3 Imp. Rune Tap I like it so much. That will probably change when I'm deep into 25mans however.

a 10% heal to your party doesn't do anything and is a waste of a blood rune.

Having blood worms adds ~50 dps and makes you a god when farming outside of raiding.

You can fiddle around with all these, bloodworms work fine in raids(tested them the other day, no stupid aggro or anything) but the dps gain is very minor. Considering blood aura doesn't stack, and runetap and marks have limited usage, can spec for them. Still a higher dps gain than any of the other talents for obvious reasons, so yeah worth it if you want to squeeze every bit of dps possible. They're also useful for some fights by providing free healing.