If SoB is 100% chance, no cooldown, and procs on offhand attacks. As well as currently 0 remotely good 2 handers for tanking in Ulduar it may open some real possibilities for dual wield tanking. Other factors could include the proc rate on the new parry enchant, and the expertise buff currently on ptr that was never documented anywhere.

It would bring runic power to current BoSanc levels on the average swing speed boss as you would effectively get 15-20 runic every 4 seconds. This isn't broken by any stretch of the imagination but coupled with the far larger advantage dual wield would have in stats due to no new Inevitable Defeat yet it could finally bring real viability to dual wielding.

In general you would favor a flat bonus as dual wield and a percentage bonus as 2h.

Just some random numbers to illustrate the point...

If dw average strike is 500 from weapon damage and 2h is 1000 from weapon damage then a +100 damage bonus per disease favors dw and a +10% damage per disease favors 2h. With 2 diseases up the flat bonus would mean total strike damage of 700 from dw and 1200 from 2h. Percent bonus would be 600 and 1200.

I haven't done the serious math on it yet but I have a hard time believing that DW with SoB will generate any more threat than 2h. For one thing you're giving up 2h mastery for 4% damage. For another the 2h build may throw less runestrikes but they will hit considerably harder. As a percentage of mainhand damage my gut tells me that a 2h will have more runestrike damage and less white damage than a dw setup. What it really comes down to is what percentage of my mainhand white damage is replaced, at a high threat 150% bonus, by yellow runestrike damage?

Yes, you seem to be correct in that stream of logic.

I am quite sure DW will still be a viable option(not that I am currently DW or seroiusly plan on it). I have a long day of overtime today at work. I am going to do some sample math for DW using existing 1handers we know in Uld and see how it relates to some current weapons or even the Stormedge from Uld as far as strike damage and how it relates to threat given the stats I run with on live unbuffed.

I have done a few hours of math and have gotten some average aggregate data regarding DS versus HS using my own AP and an Ulduar weapon, Stormedge which is not all that spectacular and even less impressive than a BoH. Please let me know if any of the formulae are off or any of my calculations are incorrect!

Stormedge:
212.3dps
594-892, 3.50.
AVGDMG= 743dmg
Assuming OPDK unbuffed AP: 3182
AVGDMG= 1538.6 w/AP scale.

Attack Power Scaling:
Attack power (AP) increases your base DPS by 1 for every 14 attack power. For example, an AP of 28 will give you 2 DPS. To convert DPS into average damage per swing: (Weapon DPS + AP/14) * Weapon Speed. -WoWwiki
Example:
(avgdps+(AP/14))*speed
(212.3+(3182/14))*3.5
(212.3+227.29))*3.5
1538.6 contribution from atkpwr

Death Strike Formulas:
[(g).75] +225.75 = x

Modified Formula(Blood Spec'd while Blood Gorged and DS glyph assuming 40RP)
[(g).75]+225.75 = 1.86x

Heart Strike Formulas:
[(g)(.5)] + 368 = y

Modified Heart Strike w/blood gorged/2hspec/bloody strikes/2 diseases/20% extra from BS glyph
[(g)(.5)] + 368 = 2.603y


Actual #s!
Death Strike (FU)
[(1538.6)(.75)] + 225.75 = 1.89x
1153.95 + 225.75 = 1.89x
1379.7 = 1.89x
X= 2607.63
2607.63 Damage per Death Strike when Glyphed+fully talented.

Heart Strike (B)
[(1538.6)(.5)] + 368 = 2.603y
769.3+368 = 2.603y
1137.3= 2.603y
X= 2960.39

2960.39 Damage per Heart Strike w/blood gorged, 2h spec, 2 diseases, 20% glyph, and Bloody Strikes.

Conclusions
This does not reflect anything else other than non-crit, average damage. Though, if you were able to connect with your HSs, it would seem that they would be the optimal choice in a rotation. Thus giving credence to the need for Death Rune Mastery compared to just using DSx2HSx2 in a 2nd part of a rotation.

HS also seems like it will be the better choice given gear since both benefit from MoM, yet only HS benefits from Subversion(9% more crit). HS also has the added benefit of launching a free DC at the mob in question dealing around 1100dmg on the PTR during my testing using only HoW and my blood buffs.

I searched through this thread to find something to correlate this using the words Death Strike Heart Strike but came up with nothing relevant.

I have a small question to ask, I may of missed it in the 17 pages of posts here, but when your tanking Sartharion 3D, when Vesperon's Twilight torment is in affect, can you still damage yourself if your attacking Sartharion even though he is immune to all damage?

Twilight Torment - Spell - World of Warcraft
Twilight Torment deals base damage, not reflected damage, so yes. I typically stop auto-attacking between using Icy Touch to avoid taking TT damage or parry-hasting Sarth until the debuff ends. It's a lot to heal through and you can make it a little easier for your raid.

I think you have a problem with your multipliers. I was under the impression that they stacked multiplictively.

i.e For HS i have (1.4)*(1.1)*(1.04)*(1.45) = 2.0, and for DS (1.3)*(1.1)*(1.04)*(1.25) = 1.86.


From your numbers for base damage I get:

HS: 3016
DS: 3601


If we take critical strike into account, assuming a base 20% crit chance, Subversion and MoM:

DS crit chance is 26%


HS crit chance is 29%

So extra damage from crit is

HS: 1268
DS: 1357


So total average damage for the two of them is

HS: 4289
DS: 4959


Assuming DC hits for 1100, Sudden Doom adds an extra 165 to HS, so the final numbers are

HS: 3016 + 1268 + 165 = 4454
DS: 3601 + 1357 = 4959

So yeah, I would say 2 HS are probably better than 1 DS.

However, suppose you don't take subversion and sudden doom. Then the extra crit damage from HS is only
.2*1.45*3016 = 875

So we have:

HS: 3891
DS: 4959

In this case the difference is not that great.


The other thing to bear in mind is the threat generated by healing from DS. I believe (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) that the extra threat is half of the damage done, assuming no overheals. Since the amount of overheals is highly variable, it is obviously something that needs to be tested with experience.

However, assuming no overheals, factoring this into account would give:

DS: 7439

Which is probably better than 2 heart strikes in most situations.

For me it appears that if you are going to pick up Subversion and Sudden Doom, you are better off getting DRM as well. If you want to pick up other talents like Spell Deflection, IRT, Morbidity, or Improved Icy Touch, you're probably better off skipping DRM.


One thing to take away from all this is that Subversion is better than Sudden Doom - even if you take Morbidity.

Close. Threat from healing is effective healing divided by two. Say you heal for 1000; 500 is overheal, 500 is effective heal, 250 baseline threat is generated. If that is modified by Frost Presence, then it would become 518.75 threat. Effective healing from a fully buffed and talented Death Strike may be useful threat, one more thing to test. It's a small amount of AoE threat as well, as the threat is divided amongst your targets. I often used to get the attention of new lava spawns on Sarth3D (as MT) with a Death Strike or Rune Tap that coincided with their spawn.

Thank you very much, I had my bonus damage multipliers being additive when they were multiplicative. Thank you for the correction, it seems that, personally I would rather have the fewer strikes, the possibly larger threat(with healing) and then less GCDs to endure.

My gear is moderately good for this, I have good threat stats and have plenty of food buffs and can get a few people together later. I get out of work 3 hours from now and hopefully I can find some time to realistically test this a bit more with either expose armor or sunder and a few more buffs to get a realistic image of example tps.

That said, glad to see someone actually read all my incorrect math, now I can go back and redo all of it!

Also, noorm just redid the multiplicative coefficient for the HS total, its 2.32. Sooo....going back to redo math with that coefficient. DS math was spot on. 1.86

EDIT(AGAIN): Just did the #s again, and HS avgs out at 2960.39 per HS. Even more credence to the HSx4 cycle. Though, if we can prove one thing from our discussion here. Those two cycles are very close. With any certainty if things stay like this, DSx2>HSx2 will outclass DSx1>HSx4 due to the freedom of GCDs and the ability to dump RP more freely.If you don't mind rerunning those #s with your other formulas for crit, and the DC I would be much appreciative, thanks again for the help!

You're calculating the average weapon damage from the Stormedge twice, first in the attack power scaling, and another time adding it to the contribution from atkpwr. This doesn't necessarily invalidate the results, it effectively means the same as if you were calculating it for a much higher attack power. You're also including the Death Strike glyph as a possibility, but not doing the same thing for the Blood Strike glyph. The BS glyph increases the damage done by Heart Strike, and works from things like Frostfire Bolt on bosses. If they changed it not to work anymore in a newer PTR version, it'd be great to know.

For Death Strike we get
WD * 0.75 + 225.75
10% Blood Gorged
30% Improved Death Strike
9% Bloody Vengeance
25% from glyph
4% from 2H-weapon spec

(WD * 0.75 + 225.75 ) * 2.026
= 1.52 * WD + 457

For Heart Strike we get

WD * 0.5 + 368
20% diseases
10% Blood Gorged
9% Bloody Vengeance
45% Bloody Strikes
20% from Glyph
4% from 2H-weapon spec

(WD * 0.5 + 368 ) * 2.603
= 1.30 * WD + 958

So effectively Heart Strike gets a higher base damage, but Death Strike scales better with attack power and your weapon. At 1538.6 average weapon damage like in your example, you'll get the following damages for the attacks:

Death Strike 2796
Heart Strike 2958

Unbuffed with both abilities glyphed Death Strike actually does less damage than a Heart Strike. Of course raid buffed you'll be closer to 5-6k attack power, which brings Death Strike above Heart Strike in damage. The healing of Death Strike on the other hand isn't reliable as a threat generator. Not only do you need to be below full health for it to be effective, but also it's value diminishes in any encounter with adds. If there are 4 adds in addition to the target you are Death Striking, you effectively only get 20% of the threat for your DS target. If there are 9 adds, you only get 10% of the healing threat for the intended target.

Sorry Worg, I was under the impression that the Weapon Damage was calculated first for a base from your weapon, then also given bonus from attack power, so you would add average weapon damage + bonus from AP. Thanks, will try to discern your math. TY!

I'm trying to look through your equation logically but it seems a little out of order and I'm having trouble understanding it. Will keep trying.

EDIT2: Nevermind, got it, had to lookat my own stuff to figure it out, Thanks again.

Yeah, got it figured out and redid the math in that post so that it isn't completely off the chart with huge Atk power again.

Also, going to include the glyph of BS.

EDIT: Going to do some more later to account for more AP, maybe 5.5k which doesn't seem unrealistic.

Just respecced unholy to see what this spec is like, and i'm a bit confused... between the first SS and the second there is a 4 second gap, there is then roughly a 3 second? then theres another gap and then finally the last one follows the rotation smoothly...

Am I doing something wrong or are these huge "empty" holes meant to be in the rotation?

I tried something like IT > PS > BS > BS > SS > RDUMP and happened to get better TPS than the above rotation, is it my spec or am I doing something wrong?

/help!

Higher AP Values, Assumes 5500 AP buffed.

Heart Strike:
[(2118.025)(.5)+368 = 2.603y
(1059.0125+368) = 2.603y
1427.0125 =2.603 y
3714.51 = y

3714.51/HS given 5500 AP + Bonuses

Death Strike:
[(2118.025)(.75)] + 225.75 = 1.86x
1588.52 + 225.75 = 1.86x
1814.27 = 1.86x
3374.04 = x
3374.04/DS given 5500 AP + Bonuses


Seems even at higher elevated APs we see higher HS damage. So:
HSx2
7429.02 per 2 Blood runes, and a higher crit % and the ability to launch an extra DC.

3374.04 per 1F 1U + Healing threat, along with the ability to get more Tanking Utility talents such as IRT, Spell Deflection. Also gives the added benefit of easing your rotation and gives more freedom on GCDs and Rune Dumps

If rune dumps aren't specifically listed, it's assumed that you dump whenever you have an empty spot in the rotation. You don't wait until the end of the double-rotation to mass dump DC, as this will waste huge amounts of RP and time.

Thus, the actual rotation will be something more like:

IT PS BS BS SS {DC until runes are ready} SS SS SS DC DC {DC until runes are ready}

I hope I'm not just an idiot, but where is this coming from? Unless I am completely blind, even the new version is a proc on being hit (or a successful dodge/parry). I'm not seeing how DW is relevant, unless you're considering the minor effect of additional parry haste.

You won't burn through it in one sec, that's a bit of hyperbole. The new Scent is also 10 RP.

Where DW will see a significant benefit is if the RP gain is a net gain over time while hitting Rune Strike every attack. Since DW will main hand attack more often than a 2H will, the RP generation has to be faster to pay the cost since global cooldown use of runes to gain RP is static. If RP generation goes up, the likelihood that DW will auto instead of Rune Strike goes down.

That's all a big if based on the quote: "If SoB is 100% chance, no cooldown, and procs on offhand attacks."
Yet to be tested really, to answer the original question.

I agree that it is unreliable in that it is not always useful in every situation, but the extra threat it provides is significant. If you do decide to go with DRM, you should still take it into account in your rotation. If you're at around 93% health when your death runes refresh, it will be a net threat increase if you use a DS instead of HSx2, as that particular DS will do half again more threat, and DS will refresh the Death Runes for later use. That is if you down happen to be surrounded by adds. Not only that, but DS takes some of the burden off your healers, which may be better in the big picture anyway.

Thanks for the updated analysis. It does appear that DRM adds a significant amount of threat. One thing to point out is that HS only provides extra crit if you also take subversion, and then only about 3%. Still, in ideal situations DRM could add about 200 DPS. (And Subversion does go very well with DRM.)

I guess it comes down to is weather of not the added threat will make a difference.

Also, in light of the relatively minor TPS boost that Sudden Doom provides relative to Subversion, I think it is very skippable.

Thanks for your reply I now have another question, I think I know the answer but I need clarification.

In our raids we always have an elemental shaman, see'ing as the unholy spec is mainly spell attacks, would his totems buff my damage which in turn will buff my TPS?

I've been playing with a few builds last few days, deep blood, deep frost and deep unholy, all seem to be roughly the same TPS when tested on elites in Icecrown but blood seems to come out on top, I'm only seeing numbers of 4-5k though which i'm guessing is because i'm not raid buffed.

Thoughts?

Not by a margin that is worth it in the end I think.

An elemental shaman, as far as I know has 4 buffs:

1. Spell haste (Wrath of Air)
2. Spell power (Totem of Wrath)
3. Spell crit dealt (Elemental Oath)
4. Spell crit taken by mobs (Totem of Wrath)

1 is next to useless as the haste you would gain hardly affects anything, at best you'd gain a tenth of a second on GCD from Deathcoils
2 is completely useless as we dont use spellpower.
3 only works only on a select few spells, its pretty much wasted on a tanking DK.
4. Works on enemies, so you don't need to be in the group.

-----

In the end, as unholy tank you don't benefit from spell buffs as much as you'd think.

If you break down the damage,the main source of damage (and thus threat) comes from:

- Runestrike (physical)
- White attacks (physical)
- Scourge Strike (benefits from ebon plaguebringer, but uses melee stats)
- Diseases (can not crit, don't benefit from spellpower)
If you would have Wandering Plague that is based on melee crit and not spell crit
- Unholy Blight (can not crit, doesn't benefit from spellpower)
- Deathcoil (this is the only attack that would benefit from shaman's buffs, but the amount of TPS this is responsible of is low)

Thanks for that I was thinking something similar but I thought the spellpower gain may have been a benefit, clearly I was wrong!

Also... maybe someone has an idea why i'm experierncing similar TPS in all specs but blood is coming out top? (Gear is on armory) I quite like to min/max and its fairly frustrating that the numbers don't seem to get bigger with different specs

ALSO! as a side note, In heroics (with nothing really except Horn of Winter) i'll be getting 4-5k TPS, I feel that seems low considering what i've read some people hitting, it worries me because i'm usually running with a mage and elemental shaman in heroics for achievements and the mage hits crazy threat like 3.5-5k and about 4k-5k when hes using nuke buttons... In raids I manage no more than 5-7k TPS which is fine, unless its Patchwerk but we all know that isn't a good test. Am I doing something wrong with gear? (Rotations and specs are all taken from this thread)

Yeah, even with sudden doom it seems just a bit too little for 3 points. That said I noticed last night while testing that Heart strike hitting your 2nd target would launch a Death Coil at the other target 15% of the time. That said, still lackluster, which is too bad.