Agreed, it is. You can take dark death and it does a small amount of dps more as long as you have 4 pieces of t7.5. From a min/max perspective I most likely should have included it over UB. It was more of a personal choice as I find it is simply easier to have the 10 seconds extra on UB, given the amount of cooldowns we need to watch. You are correct though, thanks for pointing it out. I can rerun the sim once the EP test is done, but the point still remains that it should be competitive to 2H builds, which is what I was trying to say.

In my opinion, you would be better off with Obliterate and using armor penetration if you want to go that approach. At 14% armor penetration, Obliterate begins to outscale Scourge Strike. Using Obliterate has the side effect of actually making Armor Penetration scale better and the more armor penetration you have, the better it gets. You'll find a point where it scales better than Critical Rating, Expertise, and eventually even Haste. It will improve your white damage and scaling and should increase overall DPS in the process.

You could cut three points in Outbreak and one in Scourge Strike for three points in Annihilation and one point in Chill to the Grave. Cutting one point from Desecration for the second point in Chill to the Grave and you found how I created the 0/18/53 spec in the first place. Then you can move to T7 to T8 because your moves generate more runic power.

I have 0/10/61 somewhere around 6.1k DPS with top Ulduar gear. We should be striving to do more DPS than this or we are wasting our time.

@Kithus: I think I determined why your test of 0/18/53 is so different from my own results. Obliterate should be a high priority and Icy Touch should be just above Blood Strike. Looking at your priority list, Reaping was generating Death Runes and they were being used for Blood Strikes instead because it had no other option unless a disease timer ran out. In other words, it's like I didn't have Reaping at all.

This certainly got me thinking. Reading though the unholy discussion, morbidity had a lower dps stat weight than desecration did. So I played around quickly with the talents and stopped the EP sim for now. Rerunning the simulation with the same stats but different talent distributions I got:

original: 5440 dps

Dark Death instead of UB: 5459 dps

Dark death, 2/2 epidemic, 3/5 desecration: 5485 dps

Dark death, 2/2 epidemic, 4/5 desecration, 2/3 morbidity: 5511 dps

Dark death, 2/2 epidemic, 5/5 desecration, 1/3 morbidity: 5521 dps

Which makes 0/13/58 a more optimized single target spec. I would still pull the points from desecration to go into improved unholy presence, ghoul frenzy and morbidity for mobile fights.

Edit to Orlgin: These stats are from current gear. We should be looking at available specs now. The scaling should be nice from ulduar gear even if we do not upgrade to t8 or the new sigil (though I suspect at some point the gains in gear will outscale the loss from losing the 4 piece bonus). As for obliterate, I have read what you spoke about it. I agree that it is an option at higher levels of armor pen, but we shouldn't discount scourge strike as an option because of all it's modifiers in addition (and this is the bigger deal) to it's ability to refresh diseases. Perhaps in naxx gear this spec I present is the way to go, but at higher gear levels (with armor pen) we should be switching to an obliterate-centric spec.

It's a good theory but this is the priority scale I was using to test the oblit build:

<BloodTap></BloodTap>
<UnholyBlight></UnholyBlight>
<DeathCoil></DeathCoil>
<FrostFever></FrostFever>
<BloodPlague></BloodPlague>
<Obliterate></Obliterate>
<BloodStrike></BloodStrike>

And a small clip from the combat log generated:

1 Blood Tap
.
.
555 BS hit for 1157
.
.
2555 BS crit for 2271
2705 BS hit for 1157
.
.
4555 BS hit for 1002
4705 BS hit for 765

You can clearly see BS is only used every 20 seconds. I think the big problem is the lack of armor pen in your ulduar gear list. It only comes out to, I believe, 205 total armor pen which isn't enough to outscale scourge strike according to your numbers. While the numbers clearly show several DW build scale better than 0/17/54 DC spam in unholy presence the question then becomes when do they scale enough to overtake it? Do we have that level of gear even available in ulduar?

This thread should be a lot more fun once we get 3.1 released and all the available gear is data mined. We can create BiS item sets for our specs and compare numbers from there.

As promised here are the EP values for the modified 0/13/58 build with scourge strike I posted. 5515 dps over 1000h.


With these stats:

Don't forget that Armor Penetration is getting a 25% bonus so instead of 13.31%, it will be 16.64% instead which is enough to pass the threshold. If you run the sim with full raid buffs, Obliterate should be dealing more damage than a Sinister Strike with the same stats. You also avoid partial resists which is an unfortunate side-effect of shadow damage.

Could you give us the character stats you used for that please?

I checked your Armory profile, used those stats to run Kahorie's simulator and I'm afraid you made a mistake there. You used the full attack power value instead of the AP bonus. The results were the following: 6.7k DPS using full AP value (3355 AP) while only 5.1k DPS when just the raw AP bonus from items/enchants (749) was used.

Official notes are putting razorice at 10% again. If that's the case FC/RI is back in and it's a buff to builds that use IT for RP generation over SS or oblit.

1193 str
304 agi
42 int
14016 armor

wep1:171.6 dps 1.6 speed
wep2:156.5 dps 1.5 speed

749 ap
390 haste
360 hit
646 crit
56 ArP
59 exp

These are the stats i entered to character sheet.

Kithus, would entail the top build/rotation to be the DC priority using DC when you are 40+ rp and using death runes on IT with FC/RI runeforges?

Okay guys, the patch is here, everybody needs to put the talents in the right places again.
Is there some kind of conclusion on what DW spec + rotation is the way to go without any of the new gear?
Or is DW lacking so far behind 2H dps that it's just plain stupid to stay DW spec without any Ulduar gear?

It would be nice to form some kind of conclusion on the way to go now and continue to figure out the best spec to go with once the new gear is gathered.

It gives you enough hit, some expertise, haste, armor penetration, and a whole lot of Strength.[/quote]
I see that you suggest Sigl of the Vengeful Heart which drops in Ulduar, what Sigl is recommended for this build to you get one?

Also is this a good spec for a character that is able to do all of Naxx 25?

For DW the best spec in pre-Ulduar gear is 0/17/54 with DC spam as I've discussed previously. There is some discussion about which spec will come out ahead in ulduar gear but we can't even really finish that discussion until we know what all the Ulduar gear is. That seems to be the concensus right now, unless anyone disagrees?

Could you provide a link with the 0/17/54 also with weapon types is it slow (FC)/Slow (FC) or Slow (FC)/Fast (Razorice or Cinder)? Also what sigl would work best with this type of build. I personally tend to do better with rotations over priority so would you have a rotation? I have read thru the many pages of this thread lately with the Simulations done. But I would just like to know what 0/17/54 you recommend since this thread has had a couple different variations.

Thanks.

Last night I ran with the 0/13/58 spec and was pulling decent numbers. I am trying to get the WWS sorted out since there was a problem with the file.

Uhmm, which spec did you try? What rotations do you use? what sigil? what weapons? what presence?

Kithus's build of 0/17/54 in Unholy Presence which uses priority system that fires Death Coils as often as possible is top DPS. You should be using that to begin with. My build scales better and (in theory) should surpass his once you achieve optimal gear.

Kithus,

What rotation are you running with what glyphs?

I'm assuming it's either...

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9757

or

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9757

But I want to know is, is this a slow(FC)/slow(FC) or slow(FC)/fast(RI) or what? Also, what is a decent rotation for these builds?

Also I thought it was just proved again that UB does indeed do more damage than DC? So how is this build the "highest DPS" in that case?

Here is my spec, hope you like it.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...2&version=9767

PS>IT>BS(pest)>SS>UB>BS(boil)>SS>DC>DC
PS>IT>SS>SS>SS>SS>DC(CE)>DC>DC

Gotta put your GF and gargoyle in there for bosses but just wing it that's what I do.

His armory shows Slow/Fast... however hes running a completely different spec... 11/08/52