Goetterdaemmerung

Obliterate is generating 0 RP for me (15 after talents and t7), making it impossible to accurately compare DPS involving obliterate-using specs.

Deja vu.

EDIT: This math is innacurate.

I wrote up some math about this but my browser/this forum ate it. The results are these:

If you're using a 2h weapon, or a >2.2s 1h weapon, you will see BCB procs cut in exactly 1/2 with raid buffs.

If you're using a 1.5s 1h weapon, you will see BCB procs cut into exactly 1/3 if your non-windfury (gear haste, ITT talent, unholy presence) haste product does not exceed 1.25. For example, if you use unholy presence (1.15), and you have the ITT talent(1.05), you need to have 3.5% (1.035) or less gear haste to dodge this threshold.

If you exceed this threshold, your effective swing dips beneath 1.0s, and your procs are cut into exactly 1/4. A 1.6s weapon adds a generous 9% more haste to the threshold between 1/3 and 1/4.

What a stupid mechanic.

edit: I've forgotten moonkin aura (1.03 haste), which narrows the margins even more.

 

Darian_TruBlade

It's likely that Blizzard wants to see how big of an effect BoSanc has on DK and Warrior tanking. It's unlikely that any of the better 25-man guilds lack this buff, making it difficult to collect data on live as to how much it contributes.

The general consensus seems to be that with the buff DKs can't possibly run out of Runic Power, but without it starvation is rampant. If Blizzard find that this is the case it's likely we'll see some buff to Runic Power generation for tanking.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Grigori

Even now, OBx2+ITx6 and PSx4+ITx6 Unholy Presence builds (ITx7 with the BT bug) beat 4xOB+2xIT builds. I suppose Blizzard just wants to pound the point home with these inexplicable changes.

I assume Blizzard wants to move DW to Unholy Presence as well with this.

 

Bullshifter

I think Aldy has been doing some PTR testing that is showing some evidence that it will still benefit us more to stay in Blood Presence than in Unholy Presence. UP netting somewhere around a 10% increase in dps, which doesn't outweigh the flat 15% increase that Blood Presence gives us, so BcB probably won't be an issue unless you have a weapon that's already close to that 3.0 mark.

I'll see if I can find the actual page.

 

Goetterdaemmerung

The result that UP is inferior to BP is unsurprising -- I was expecting for the default opinion to be *against* the new unholy presence, with testing to try to change that opinion.

It is very hard indeed to imagine how 10% faster runes could overcome 15% increased dps. At best, your rune-based abilities are firing exactly 10% faster, and your RP income is 10% increased.

It is unfathomable (besides the obvious "because it's called unholy presence!") why they would add a buff to unholy presence in the unholy tree -- the existing unholy playstyle is the least GCD-bound, which remains (despite this talent's feeble attempt to change this) the deciding factor on whether to employ UP. In other words, 2h unholy was previously the least likely spec to find unholy presence attractive (already ironic), and here they have inserted a buff to unholy presence deep within hostile (or at least apathetic) talent tree territory.


In other news, the bug introduced with 3.0.8 where players are spontaneously hearthed persists to the PTR.

 

GrizleyCQ

Assuming they are aiming the BCB nerf at DW and not 2h all they have to do is change the cooldown from 3 seconds to 2 or 2.5 seconds. I'm pretty sure UP alone will bring BoH down below or at least near the 3.0 second swing mark.

I find it somewhat ironic that they would consider a change like this one after stating that haste doesn't do enough for melee classes. Why would you add a mechanic that makes haste something you actively have to avoid instead of just ignore on an item?

 

GrizleyCQ

Doing a quick comparison I would expect UP to beat blood...

Blood:
15% more on all personal damage, white and yellow.

Unholy:
+15% white damage
+15% ghoul damage
+15% Gargoyle damage
+10 yellow damage

I guess diseases would be boosted in blood and not unholy, but even as unholy diseases shouldn't be that large a percentage of your damage.

The places where the auras bonuses don't cancel would be.

Blood:
15% damage on yellow
15% damage on disease

Unholy
15% damage on pets
10% faster rune usage

Something to consider would be how many runes you blow on inferior dps attacks to keep diseases up, or rather how many SS you do that have a chance to proc diseases. 10% haste on runes may be better than 15% damage in that instance.

 

Fyrestryke

Excellent question, especially when you look at the large amount of haste in the gear we have available to us. I know I currently have 400 Haste rating in my gear without prioritizing it in the least, in fact I try to avoid it if possible. We have 149 Haste rating just in our T7.5 set...not to mention all the other gear that contains copius amounts of haste. I don't think I'd be able to build a set right now with the gear I currently own that would keep the attack speed of my Cryptfiend's Bite >3 seconds in UP, and that is a 3.6 speed weapon.

 

Goetterdaemmerung

(I'm going to fall into a blood presence advocate here, just for the sake of taking a closer look at what imp. UP really adds)

You've brought up an interesting point, but your numbers need, uh, 'nerfing':

The numbers I have seen indicate that pets gain 50% or less of your haste. Further, a portion of your ghoul dps (Claw) is unaffected by haste altogether. This should put unholy's bonus to pets somewhere beneath 7.5%.

Blood presence allows necrosis and BCB to double dip into its 15% damage increase; unholy presence does not.

Imp unholy presence does not increase yellow damage by 10%, it increases rune-direct-damage by 10%: scourge strike, blood strike, plague strike, icy touch. It leaves unaffected: diseases, wandering plague, and most importantly, unholy blight and deathcoil (and, as mentioned, BCB/necrosis).

 

Pyros

Actually it's not weird, first they spread the availability, 2nd they nerf the efficiency, seems perfectly fine. BoSanct in its current form is way too good, but just nerfing it wouldn't help with the fact you need a protadin in your raid to provide it, which somewhat heavily limits your options for even 25man since out of your 2(3 if you're feeling scared) tanks, one has to be a protadin.

However in that patch, they gave DKs a self only version(Scent of Blood, not TOO deep in blood), they gave disc priest another version(very good but hard limited with an internal cooldown) and there's still the resto druid one I believe(procs off hot ticks). Spread and nerf, the good way to do it in my opinion. There's very little chances you won't have at least one and possible two of these effects even in 10man, and especially in 25man.

 

Cloudgatherer

It's glorified shield block or holy shield that would have a 33% uptime if used every CD. Frankly, the talent is looking better as a deep frost dps talent to keep up a pretty huge bonus to strength. As a tanking talent though, very very situational (lots of little mobs, or fast hitting low damage bosses), but outside of that, why even push it for a boss like Malygos, Sapphiron, or Patch? You know there will be at least some fights like that in Ulduar, given that the vast majority of fights in the past have been like that.

 

jaffee

So here's my question: After these changes (namely the HB shuffle AND nerf), are we going to want to go deep unholy to dual wield, or go deep frost? I'm not great with the math and the comparison, but Frost seems pretty attractive considering the changes to Unholy. Thoughts?

 

◊ Hanos

Don't forget Windfury, the raid buff from the Totem or from Icy Talons is enough to push you under 3.4 with Betrayer before any haste from gear or Unholy Presence. Basically, if the intention was to nerf Fast/Fast DW Specs, they need to reduce the ICD to more like 2 seconds for it to not be a significant nerf to the value of the talent for 2-hand specs, which would still dramatically cut the value to DW Specs, even Slow/Slow because both weapons will be close 2 seconds with WF alone, 2.5 would probably work, as would 2.4.

PvP = The Reason We Can't Have Nice Things

 

Grigori

For SS builds (by its very nature 2H) there is basically no way Unholy Presence will beat Blood Presence. You can chuck 13 GCDs easily in Blood Presence with a proper rotation without ever going over 20 sec. The RP generation of SSx4 rotation puts SS builds at 13.46875 GCDs to use all resources with the new DC glyph. That is not nearly enough leftover to make Unholy Presence good with SS builds, with or without the faster rune regen.

2H Unholy builds aren't the only ones to go that deep into the Unholy tree. Deep Unholy DW builds will be GCD-bound with the new DC glyph and will benefit from the talent.

 

clairecakes

DW strength came from using the Unholy tree's spell damage buffs to buff your Frost damage. If you're going 51 points into frost to grab Howling Blast you have to skip some pretty important talents in Unholy.

The alternative is to skip Howling Blast and go deep Unholy, but again, you end up skipping some very important talents in Frost.

As the PTR currently stands DW won't be the juggernaut it currently is.

 

Direheart

I think it would be more accurate to say that, unless you're willing to gimp your DPS for the sake of aesthetics and/or enjoying the play style, there's no longer a reason to DW as a Death Knight.

 

◊ Embar

The Blood Boil coefficient on the PTR now seems to be around 0.06 instead of 0.04.

Base: 180-220
Testing with 694 ap gives: 222-262 (42/694 gives ~0.06052)
With 3045 ap: 363-403 (183/3045 gives ~0.06010)

The above is without diseases or any talents; adding diseases seems to just be a 1.5x multiplier on total damage.

On occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. -- James Nicoll

 

Hidden

More rune abilities result in more RP to spend on DC and while not increasing disease damage, it increases the average amount of SS you can do per disease and as such (through the SS glyph) lowers the amount of times you have to refresh diseases through IT/PS.

It's also not 10% but rather 11.1% ( (1/9)/(1/10)=10/9=1.11 ).

In the end you're most certainly looking at a DPS increase if you can't spend all your RP in BP.

About DW:
Blizzard once stated they're fine with certain talents favoring DW over 2h (and the other way round). Now we're in the position that every talent favors 2h over DW.

 

Grigori

I doubt that the new 0/20/51 Unholy Presence DW builds will be much behind the the old 0/32/39 Blood Presence builds with the new ImpUP talent and DC glyph. Black Ice was nerfed for IT, but was buffed for DC (which in turn will be a higher percentage of total damage with the DC glyph running ImpUP).

You do lose the new monster Glacier Rot, which was moved to tier 5. I think Blizzard is very weary of stacking too many multipliers with Impurity. With the new DC glyph, it may be worth it to give up Gargoyle for 7% extra IT damage with 1/3 Glacier Rot for 0/21/50. We will have to see how much they buff Gargoyle to decide.

The problem with DW is that, with the BCB and Necrosis nerfs, DW will scale even worse to gear progression than it does now (considering that DW builds already have relatively poor gear progression scaling on live). We will have to see how the new PS glyph bonus stacks.

 

Hidden

What would make you use DW over 2h with that sort of build though? DW offers slightly higher white damage while every single talent and PS as well as BS favor 2h over DW.

 

Clandestine

I've noticed several people talking about Blessing of Sanctuary, it seems like people haven't noticed that the runic power and rage portions of BoS are currently removed in 3.1

 

GrizleyCQ

True. It should increase the pets white damage by 15%.

It will let you throw 10% more UB's and DC's though. I realize UB has an uptime and 10% more RP doesn't equate to 10% more UB damage but it does equate directly to 10% more DC's, more if you factor in the extra RP you gain and don't spend on UB.

 

Grigori

For SS builds, you can spend all your RP in Blood Presence almost all the time even with tne new DC glyph unless you are unlucky with your SS glyph (or don't know where in the rotation to use your RP abilities).

Another concern is that, if the early PTR tests are correct about the CD reduction only applying to the full 10-sec rune CD, then only rotations with symmetrical rune usage will be able to do two rune sets per 18 sec. Rotations with BSx2/SS and PS+IT/SS are not symmetrical, so unless you are chugging BS+IT with your Blood runes and SS with everything else, you may not even get any benefit out of ImpUP (although there is always the possibility that interaction with rune CD leeway will be fixed in a future iteration of the talent).

I think, at the very least, they ought to reverse the KM nerf to keep the flavor of the tree, seeing as how Frost is "officially" the "DW tree" with the lone holdout talent that favors DW over 2H. At this point, it would not surprise me if they renamed Dual-Wield Specialization to something like "Nerves of Cold Steel" and make it favor 2H.

The slight edge 2H will have over DW on BCB/Necrosis is simply a different magnitude of slight compared to the slight edge DW has over 2H on auto attacks. Looking at my numbers, PS+BS will have to combine for almost 20% of your overall damage in order to counter DW's overall edge over 2H on auto-related damage (auto+Necrosis+BCB). Even at 4xPS+2xBS per rotation with the new PS/BS (assuming you use BS at all), you are not going to do anywhere near that with PS+BS (not even in Blood Presence, let alone in Unholy Presence with extended RP usage).

 

◊ Embar

The Obliterate glyph has actually been buffed and is adding 25% overall damage to OB instead of the 20% multiplier on live.

On occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. -- James Nicoll

 

jaffee

Like what, Nerves of Cold Steel? That seems basically useless now, unless a deep unholy DW spec comes out post patch that's worth playing. I'd think the best bet would be something with IT spam, but who knows. I was playing around with a 4*/2* build that took 5 in impurity and got down to 1/5 of Tundra Stalker. Seems.. "viable." Not sure. Here's what I came up with: MMO-Champ. I'm just wondering how well it'll pan out on the PTR's, but I can't get on them now for obvious reasons. I'm worried that to be a dual-wielding, plate-wearing bastion of doom I'll have to reroll a warrior. Considering the T7 set bonus and the current patch notes it seems that Blizzard doesn't want DK's to DW. I'm not sure I can blame them considering we may have taken it somewhere they didn't want, or didn't expect.

In other news, how is Deep Frost 2h DPS, is it comparable to Deep Unholy? I was thinking something along the lines of 20/51/0 if it's still viable, but I don't know much about the current 2h tree comparison, so I don't know what the discrepancy between the two post-patch would be. I think frost looks very attractive, and I'm glad they dumped Oblit on the T7 set bonus (maybe I'll start using that bonus, fancy that).