3/3 ravenous undead or 2/3 ravenous with -1 wandering plague
5/5 black ice instead of 5/5 bladed armour
This spec also came out 1.6% higher than a fairly typical 12-8-51 unholy tank build with epidemic and a 20s long rotation.
Caveats: simulating tank 'dps' in a simulator designed for proper DPSers has its complications, notably you cannot model rune strike within it, and that since you're facing the boss you get parried (and therefore a rotation with less GCD is good for us). That said, results are internally consistent in the sim, so you can validly compare one spec with another. The above linked was the highest dps unholy tank spec I could find. I also pretend I'm in frost presence by using a higher armour value in my xml file, then sim in blood presence (this means bladed armour calculates correctly).
Questions
(1) I suspect rune strike glyph will be better for a tank than the IT Glyph, but I can't simulate that. Any thoughts?
(2) Also I'm not sure about Scent of blood -vs- Dirge. If I simulate SoB generating 45 RP per 60 seconds (based on a 2s swing boss), then 1/3 SoB with 1/2 Dirge is 1.3% higher than 2/2 Dirge. Whereas if I use a 2.5 boss, giving 36 RP/ 60s, I got the same result, which makes me suspicious about the sim.
(3) Quite possibly you'd get RP-starved in this spec, and not have RP for RS, which in fact means deciding where to lose a point and stick into SoB.
Wondering Plague and 1/3 subversion over 2H specialization and Scent of blood?
We already established that epidemic was not a good choice, and I posted the math between Ravenous Dead and BcB, which ends up being ~120 TPS BcB vs ~70 TPS, .12% parry from Ravenous Dead. Subversion and WP are inferior to 2H weap Spec. If you disagree, Im open for suggestions. GoRS is a priority, you shouldn't replace it for anything, specially in an UH build were ST threat is the major concern. As far as SoB vs dirge; you should take both. at least 1 point should go into SoB. with 3/3 you normally will get flooded, 2 is ideal; 1 is all we could get in the 13/8/50.
Consider that for unholy tank DnD is the best source of single target threat. Even if the rotation with DnD is cumbersome and not as fluid, it's best for threat purposes. Using DnD will lower the value of 2h spec.
I've refrained from updating the unholy build until I could drop some time testing threat with it. This is a solid start. I'd like to find out more about the RP scenario and the need for SoB, as well as the Multi-mob advantages of epidemic vs. Ravenous Dead.
AMZ has no noteworthy use in current endgame and untalented AMS more than satisfies the magic reduction timer need (the -6% magic damage is significant). Freeing up those points to flesh out Dirge, Ravenous Dead, maybe BcB could be in order.
Unholy has a lot of potential with Bone Shield. If I can stay comfortable with threat and avoid assassination by Dioskadre it may be worth a test in ToGC.
Questions
(1) I suspect rune strike glyph will be better for a tank than the IT Glyph, but I can't simulate that. Any thoughts?
(2) Also I'm not sure about Scent of blood -vs- Dirge. If I simulate SoB generating 45 RP per 60 seconds (based on a 2s swing boss), then 1/3 SoB with 1/2 Dirge is 1.3% higher than 2/2 Dirge. Whereas if I use a 2.5 boss, giving 36 RP/ 60s, I got the same result, which makes me suspicious about the sim.
(3) Quite possibly you'd get RP-starved in this spec, and not have RP for RS, which in fact means deciding where to lose a point and stick into SoB.
1. Rune strike is the best threat glyph, drop IT.
2. Get both, AMZ + 6% less magic damage aren't worth the points.
3. You would have to conserve RP, so removing the four AMZ points can get you SoB.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
I'm still relatively new to Unholy tanking, but I tested out a few builds this week and I am really impressed. Per some of the advice provided by this community I did elect to spec out of BCB. I noticed the parries that I was getting and got discouraged. A parried auto-swing immediately followed by a parried blood-caked strike is dangerous.
TPS seems fine. Perhaps a tad lower than what I'd see from my Blood build, but I haven't seen any threat issues. A DnD build using the relative glyph will be my next test.
So far, however, I do support the magic reduction abilities. I'd drop AMZ if I had to, but not the 6% reduction.
Just found that Kahorie's is not simulating Subversion properly. Increasing points in it is not increasing damage; that caused the low weighting I'd put on the talent. It increases blood strike but not SS in the sim results.
Notably that also means 2H-spec gets underweighted due to its synergy with Subversion.
With that caveat, I found 2h-spec didn't deliver as much punch as I'd expected, and that Wandering Plague gave more.
Note the gear baseline I used is Ulduar-25 geared, and no raid buffs except HoW.
Some comparisons for each talent discussed, where I just add a few talents in to a baseline to isolate their value:
Questions remains whether 1/3 SoB and 1 Subversion is better than 2/3 SoB, and how good the Subversion/2H-spec combo is. If you're keen, the google doc has enough data in it for you to manually calculate.
(ps. I hate using DnD for single-target tanking, it does my head in).
Edit: october 1, updated figures since they were wrong due to inflated bonus attack power on sim.
I'm sorry if this was discussed somewhere and I missed it (I doubt it, since I've read this entire thread), but I can't figure out why everyone summons "parry haste" for ditching BcB.
The last time I heard about parry haste was when some blue guy posted that they had accidentally turned parry haste on on Gormok, and hotfixed it a few days later.
I don't recall any other boss getting parry haste effects, and I even think I read somewhere that it was pretty much gone.
Basically, I guess my question is : which bosses have "parry haste" turned *on* still?
Basically, I guess my question is : which bosses have "parry haste" turned *on* still?
Faction Champions (not that it matters), Twins, Anub and his adds. All bosses in Ulduar except Kologarn (he can't parry) and maybe Ignis. The parry haste flag is seems to be set to make the initial bosses easier on the healers.
Ignoring the parry haste issue, it does increase your threat by a lot.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
Wow the guys are fast to release new versions of the sim. Subversion bug fixed, so I did a few more comparisons for us. Again, based on the same stats as mentioned earlier (around Ulduar 25 gear level). If it'd be helpful I could do these with TotC 25 stats if someone would provide theirs. This would effect the scaling on a few talents like bladed armour and wandering plague, but the biggest difference comes if I were to turn on all raid buffs in the sim (can be +30% to +50% dps improvement).
EDIT: Ignore the below DPS figures. They're wrong due to a screw-up on the sim. Correct details are in THIS new post.
Results are comparing to this build, with 72 RP/ 60s.
baseline 2968 dps
+1 subversion 2984 (0.54% gain)
2 subversion: 3000 dps (+1.1% gain, ie. linear as it should be)
1 subversion and 1 two-hand spec: 3012 dps (0.9% gain compared to subversion by itself, 1.48% gain to baseline)
1 two-hand spec: 2996 (0.94% gain)
2 two-hand spec: 3024 (1.89% gain)
bladed armour 4/5 (ie. one less than baseline: 2924 (1.5% gain from 4 to 5 bladed armour)
I think it might be possible, but only by using frost presence in the sim, which has consequence of turning on rune-strike spam (ie. as if you choose when to hit it all the time RP-permitting) so all the dps totals get distorted.
This parry-haste feature was implemented in v.1.11, but because RS gets spammed I don't use it.
Further thoughts
Edit: new accurate post HERE. Below is wrong.
Based on my data so far, the highest threat talents which people might look at and wonder about moving (ie. excluding mandatory talents like necrosis), in order are:
1. bladed armour
2. wandering plague
3. blood-caked blade
4. two-handed spec
5. subversion.
Questions I'm not sure how to rate Scent of Blood mathematically against the others, since you'd need to model (a) range of incoming damage rates to proc SoB (b) consequent gain from DCs and RSs.
Also the crit rate I have in the sim is a rating of 548 (=12.1%), which is unbuffed. Is that an appropriate figure? It'd effect wandering plague.
I think it might be possible, but only by using frost presence in the sim, which has consequence of turning on rune-strike spam (ie. as if you choose when to hit it all the time RP-permitting) so all the dps totals get distorted.
Questions I'm not sure how to rate Scent of Blood mathematically against the others, since you'd need to model (a) range of incoming damage rates to proc SoB (b) consequent gain from DCs and RSs.
Also the crit rate I have in the sim is a rating of 548 (=12.1%), which is unbuffed. Is that an appropriate figure? It'd effect wandering plague.
I noticed similiar results with turning on frost presence in the sim.
However, have you tested the use of icy touch glyph over dark death? Would the added 60 RP/min out weigh the added 15% damage for death coil? Its obvious to find the math for this in the Unholy dps thread, but that information cannot be correct for DK tanks, assuming everyone spams runestrike every time its up.
I noticed similiar results with turning on frost presence in the sim.
However, have you tested the use of icy touch glyph over dark death? Would the added 60 RP/min out weigh the added 15% damage for death coil? Its obvious to find the math for this in the Unholy dps thread, but that information cannot be correct for DK tanks, assuming everyone spams runestrike every time its up.
That is a very good point and I would love to see numbers to support it. I will try to run a sim and post some numbers soon, however I am not sure how accurate a sim would be in this case.
Based on my data so far, the highest threat talents which people might look at and wonder about moving (ie. excluding mandatory talents like necrosis), in order are:
1. bladed armour
2. wandering plague
3. blood-caked blade
4. two-handed spec
5. subversion.
I think you're confusing two things, threat and dps, those are not the same, although they're connected of course.
You talk here of highest threat talents based on dps simulation, but you're ignoring Rune Strike and DnD, two biggest threat moves.
Without those included in simulations that list can't be accurate.
One would have to model each tank tree with an optimal rotation, and also decide if going for max dps or max tps (for example an unholy rotation would use DnD on cd for max threat on single target, but is that max dps too?).
I noticed similiar results with turning on frost presence in the sim.
However, have you tested the use of icy touch glyph over dark death? Would the added 60 RP/min out weigh the added 15% damage for death coil?
Aye, in current version it's not worth using frost presence in the sim. I use blood presence with no sigil and no runeforge instead, and only HoW as buff. The +15% from blood presence can just be forgotten about or considered benefits from raid buffs.
In terms of gaining more DCs from the IT Glyph and disregarding the gain of more RP for more RS:
with 2/3 SoB and Dark Death glyph 2968 dps
same spec but IT Glyph instead of Dark Death 2932
However your real question is this:
if you take IT Glyph, and its 60 RP/min, then move 2 from SoB (I specified 72RP/min in the sim) into 2H Spec or Wandering Plague, is there a net gain and is that enough RP to feed your RS?
So,
(a) sim with IT Glyph, zero SoB and +1 WPlague and +1 2H Spec: 2971 dps (ie. net gain on DPS, but question remains whether you have enough RP for RS?).
(b) sim with 2/2 2H Spec instead: 2961 dps (lower than (a) as expected, since WP with the crit rate I have specified is better dps per point).
Originally Posted by zagor
I think you're confusing two things, threat and dps, those are not the same, although they're connected of course.
You talk here of highest threat talents based on dps simulation, but you're ignoring Rune Strike and DnD, two biggest threat moves.
I'm not confusing them, hopefully my posts have been clear on the caveats and limitations and this post now also leaves open the question of rune strike as I'm not sure how to model it in (you can't do it in the sim, so we need to mathematically add its value in afterwards).
I am not exploring the DnD-based rotation because I just don't like it, plus the sim is not well set up to calculate TPS, so it'd require manual maths manipulation of the DnD damage result. Others can do so if they choose.
As to rune strike, it's not a talent, so my ordered list was just the highest-threat talents people might look at moving around when playing with this. No doubt, as I've said here too, RS is key to deciding whether one spec or another will work, and I'd welcome a formula we can add to these models which calculates RS from a range of RP/avoidance.
So onto RS: Even knowing the minimum RP we need per 60s to feed RS would be handy. If I took a very simplified view of a 2.5s swing boss, and 60% avoidance, that's 14.4 RS opportunities per minute, therefore requiring 20 RP * 14.4 = 288 RP/ minute at most (assuming perfect conversion, which is unlikely).
In the sims, death coil is doing about 16.5% of total damage when glyphed, whereas in most WWS parses we see Rune Strike in the 20% to 30% range.
Do we even need maths then? With such a hunger for RP, is it as simple as us needing all the RP we can possibly get and therefore IT Glyph and 2 SoB and Dirge should be used?
I hope that you don't take this the wrong way, but you're not exploring the DnD-based rotation because you don't like it and because simulator doesn't allow it, and you also can't model Rune Strike for now.
We should try to examine the full scope of possibilities. If not by simulations then with math models.
To get in the conversation, typical boss swing is 2sec (slow boss), and then there are DW bosses like Algalon, or Prince p2 (Karazhan).
Also, when considering slow melee boss with 2sec swing, that's the best case scenario. Jaraxx casts a lot and that drops Rune strike opportunities.
Both speccs are focused on tps, ok i gonna use the ams glyph cause ist amazing strong in p3
DPS was ~2.7 on a 9min fight on each specc, iit wasn't needed (we tank the adds with a prot, so TC was up all the time).
I'm pretty happy with the unholy specc, bone shield and good ams are great vs anub and i don't wear the 4t9 boni (don't like it as blood, tomorrow i get it, should be nice as unholy).
@ GravityDK
You mention BCB as top3 in tps, but it's only 2.8% of my dps as a 3point talent. I don't think i specc into it again...
PS: Gear was 3pcT9 rest 245/258(only yogg polearm and general trinket <245) ~6% hit / -9% via exp
This is just a real quick glance and I could have missed something. While DPS was similar, your Blood spec had 24.8% damage from RS and Unholy did 18.6%. UH did 3.0% damage using DnD.
Threat from Blood was (24.8 - 18.6) * 1.5 = 9.3% higher than listed.
Threat from UH was 3.0 * 1.9 = 5.7% higher threat than listed.
Both speccs are focused on tps, ok i gonna use the ams glyph cause ist amazing strong in p3
DPS was ~2.7 on a 9min fight on each specc, iit wasn't needed (we tank the adds with a prot, so TC was up all the time).
I'm pretty happy with the unholy specc, bone shield and good ams are great vs anub and i don't wear the 4t9 boni (don't like it as blood, tomorrow i get it, should be nice as unholy).
@ GravityDK
You mention BCB as top3 in tps, but it's only 2.8% of my dps as a 3point talent. I don't think i specc into it again...
PS: Gear was 3pcT9 rest 245/258(only yogg polearm and general trinket <245) ~6% hit / -9% via exp
Glad that unholy worked out for you, I also plan to try out an unholy tank build for H. Anub this week to see if I add in some more aoe dps and the magic reduction of unholy is great on p2.
Goal is to DnD whenever it comes off cd and keep up diseases on adds. I might even swap the rune strike glyph to something else after seeing your unholy logs and rune strike was only 17% of your damage over all the anub fights and you didn't seem to have threat issues.
The rotation is more of a priority system than a full set rotation, DnD as soon as you can (sometimes you might sit on runes for 1-2 seconds), keep up diseases and pestilence as needed, keep up desolation. Initially it will look something like this. (replace 1 out of every 3 bs with pestilence once adds are in position)
Both speccs are focused on tps, ok i gonna use the ams glyph cause ist amazing strong in p3
AMS glyph adds two seconds, however if there is serious damage out, it seems the 50% damage cap would be reached quickly. Anyway, is melee damage or leeching swarm the damage concern in P3?
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
09/27/09, 3:05 PM
