I think one of my biggest concerns with 2h unholy is what glyphs to use. While I see the merit in continuing to use glyph of SS, I also see it as pretty useful to use the new glyph of pestilence. Ultimately what it comes down to is that it will probably be more viable on a boss to not use pestilence as a means to refresh diseases because 1) using the blood rune for pestilence does no damage when you could be using a frost rune for IT, unholy for PS or blood for BS and 2) using pestilence does not turn the blood rune into a death rune, therefore losing out on a SS in the rotation.
I also cannot decide how the typical 17/0/54 spec will change. Ghoul frenzy seems worthless from a PVE standpoint, and Unholy Aura also seems almost wasteful in a sense, it appears to me to be more of a PVP talent now more than a PVE one since the raid utility is now gone. I have a feeling that the points may be better spent somewhere else. Only time will tell!
As for the pestilence glyph - I am guessing it's a major, since I still have my current minor pestilence glyph equipped and I can't get into Dalaran without WoW crashing. For 2h frost, I can't see it being that useful, mainly if you are the one bringing imp icy talons. I was trying to envision a rotation that would incorporate it and still maintain the uptime of icy talons but couldn't. Now, if you have an enhance shaman (or are content with the regular WF) then I can see that glyph being more useful.
I know the frost rotations will probably be changing but with the buff to FS won't we want to keep IT in the rotation because of the additional RP from the glyph? I would think we want to get as much RP as possible in order to maximize the number of FS and using a glyphed pestilence to keep the diseases up would really cut down on the amount of RP generated.
I know the frost rotations will probably be changing but with the buff to FS won't we want to keep IT in the rotation because of the additional RP from the glyph? I would think we want to get as much RP as possible in order to maximize the number of FS and using a glyphed pestilence to keep the diseases up would really cut down on the amount of RP generated.
If we're comparing (IT PS BS) to (OB PEST), the RP difference is 5.
With this in mind, might we just skip the talent in a deep unholy build? As someone mentioned, it's not nearly as important as windfury was to shaman. I can see forgoing a 5% dps talent that works counter-intuitively to our itemization.
5%? I can't remember the last time I saw more than 4% BCB damage, and usually it's 2-3%. Assuming there aren't any hidden mechanics we don't know about I'd expect it to be about 2% overall DPS in 3.1.
I don't mean to blow the BCB+haste thing out of proportion. Enh shamans cared about this because haste was good for us and dual windfury was a third of our DPS. The range over which the value of haste drops off should be big enough that it's impossible to lose a big chunk of BCB damage without gaining it back via faster white swings, and once you get out of that "haste valley" the value of haste picks right back up again. I don't ever see DKs gearing around BCB.
Like you said, I played around with a talent calculator and the build I like skips BCB to get Morbidity.
I think one of my biggest concerns with 2h unholy is what glyphs to use. While I see the merit in continuing to use glyph of SS, I also see it as pretty useful to use the new glyph of pestilence.
i cant agree with you there, why would you want to stick with SS glyph if you have a 100% chance to refresh your diseases for just one Blood Rune?
I also cannot decide how the typical 17/0/54 spec will change. Ghoul frenzy seems worthless from a PVE standpoint, and Unholy Aura also seems almost wasteful in a sense, it appears to me to be more of a PVP talent now more than a PVE one since the raid utility is now gone. I have a feeling that the points may be better spent somewhere else. Only time will tell!
right now, ghoul frenzy is not channeled and i hope it will stay like that. if this is true, i'd take it; if not, we have to put the point somewhere else (CE for example)
i thought about something like THIS, only time will tell if there this will be a viable spec.
5%? I can't remember the last time I saw more than 4% BCB damage, and usually it's 2-3%. Assuming there aren't any hidden mechanics we don't know about I'd expect it to be about 2% overall DPS in 3.1.
Like you said, I played around with a talent calculator and the build I like skips BCB to get Morbidity.
Can I see the build you like? I've been messing around with it too, but generally I haven't skipped Morbidity regardless since the glyphed DC sounds good- I guess what I'm asking is where were those three points that otherwise would have gone into morbidity going? I think I might be missing something in the trees, lol...
No, you misunderstand him. He has 3/3 morbidity and 0/3 BCB.
I'm curious about glyph loadouts. With outbreak and the general buff, PS should be doing respectable dmg. Do we forgo SS glyph in order to see more PS in our rotation? SS also got a buff though, so i can see it's dmg overwhelming any buff to PS anyway.
Another thought is this: with 4pc set bonus, we have plenty of RP to not need the IT glyph. With this in mind, do we go PS glyph instead of IT? Both spells should not see too much action anyway thanks to the SS glyph. If they are dramatically absent, maybe the UB glyph is better than either.
i cant agree with you there, why would you want to stick with SS glyph if you have a 100% chance to refresh your diseases for just one Blood Rune?
Because you lose dps by using that one rune. Since pestilence does no damage you are using a rune in a rotation that will A) not be doing any damage now and B) Will now mess up the typical IT PS BS BS SS RP dump SS SS SS rotation. You will not be able to get off that 3rd SS, therefore it will be a loss of dps. You are better off using IT and PS toward the end of the rotation if your diseases were not refreshed by the time of the 3rd SS because both do damage and apply diseases.
Originally Posted by Fieh
right now, ghoul frenzy is not channeled and i hope it will stay like that. if this is true, i'd take it; if not, we have to put the point somewhere else (CE for example)
i thought about something like THIS, only time will tell if there this will be a viable spec.
edit: fixing a spelling error, my bad o/
This will also change the rotation quite a bit. You will be using an unholy rune, therefore losing out on a SS. Is the haste of the ghoul going to make up for the loss of one SS? I doubt it. Now if they made ghoul frenzy consume RP then we would have a different situation. I suppose the only way to be absolutely sure that the ghoul would do more damage in the 15 seconds of frenzy compared to one SS would be to test it or do some napkin math, but I can't do this right now since I am at work
No, you misunderstand him. He has 3/3 morbidity and 0/3 BCB.
I'm curious about glyph loadouts. With outbreak and the general buff, PS should be doing respectable dmg. Do we forgo SS glyph in order to see more PS in our rotation? SS also got a buff though, so i can see it's dmg overwhelming any buff to PS anyway.
Another thought is this: with 4pc set bonus, we have plenty of RP to not need the IT glyph. With this in mind, do we go PS glyph instead of IT? Both spells should not see too much action anyway thanks to the SS glyph. If they are dramatically absent, maybe the UB glyph is better than either.
Actually, I did understand him, but the builds I keep coming up with keep coming back around to 17/0/54, with 3/3 morbitidy and still 2/3 BcB. I'm trying to figure out where those points are going, if he was pulling the 3 that would have gone into BcB are being used in Morbidity instead, while I'm ending up with points still in both? That's why I wanted to see his build.
Lujaar, if you could, maybe PM it to me so we aren't throwing builds around on the thread?
Is imp unholy aura still worth two points if the speed only applies to oneself? I assumed it did, as it lets you out of move speed enchants and insures melee range on many fights. However, buffing 1 person in this manner is obviously not as powerful as the previous 25.
Regarding leftover points: now that desecration's RNG component has been removed, it seems like any 'leftover' points you have in your build would not suffer by being thrown into desecration. It should offer a dps increase of slightly less than n, where n is the number of points invested. Assuming a perfectly stationary fight, it should be exactly n, but we know a raid does not exist of such fights.
On the other hand, I have none of these 'leftovers' to speak of.
Is imp unholy aura still worth two points if the speed only applies to oneself? I assumed it did, as it lets you out of move speed enchants and insures melee range on many fights. However, buffing 1 person in this manner is obviously not as powerful as the previous 25.
Regarding leftover points: now that desecration's RNG component has been removed, it seems like any 'leftover' points you have in your build would not suffer by being thrown into desecration. It should offer a dps increase of slightly less than n, where n is the number of points invested. Assuming a perfectly stationary fight, it should be exactly n, but we know a raid does not exist of such fights.
On the other hand, I have none of these 'leftovers' to speak of.
I am really debating unholy aura (improved unholy presence) right now. I totally agree with you that the speed ensures you are in range, but on the other hand I can see a few other talents I would rather dump points into as a result of the outbreak change. It almost seems more valid to drop the points somewhere else and gem for run speed instead, especially since the second component of the new unholy aura will not get used (I will not be dpsing in unholy presence).
As for desecration... I still don't know if it is any more useful considering the fact that PS is not used that often in a rotation, unless of course you do not get a proc of the SS glyph (assuming you are using it).
Now that "improved unholy aura" cuts your rune CD... it is worth a thought. It only needs to be looked up if this, with a fitting talentbuild, can replace the 15% dmg boost from our "blood presence".
And imho there is no way around "Desecration".
5% more damage and it is nearly active all the time, sure you won't have it that often in movement encounters, but it helps a lot because you always have a cycle in a rotation with PS.
Now that "improved unholy aura" cuts your rune CD... it is worth a thought. It only needs to be looked up if this, with a fitting talentbuild, can replace the 15% dmg boost from our "blood presence".
And imho there is no way around "Desecration".
5% more damage and it is nearly active all the time, sure you won't have it that often in movement encounters, but it helps a lot because you always have a cycle in a rotation with PS.
From the looks of things to me, with the Glyph of Scourge Strike and longer disease duration, increasing your chances to just continuing with Scourge Strike spam, Desecration is actually going to be up less than it would have before. I'm not seeing anything about PS yet that convinces me that it's going to be better to spam that every rotation rather than essentially having the same rotation I had before.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that I was relating "Desecration" to DualWield. For those I think it is a "must have" to take in a talentbuild because every rotation using up to 2 cycles was using PS in every cycle and therefore keeping "Desecration" up nearly all the time.
Now that "improved unholy aura" cuts your rune CD... it is worth a thought. It only needs to be looked up if this, with a fitting talentbuild, can replace the 15% dmg boost from our "blood presence".
And imho there is no way around "Desecration".
5% more damage and it is nearly active all the time, sure you won't have it that often in movement encounters, but it helps a lot because you always have a cycle in a rotation with PS.
How do you figure that? Between the scourge strike glyph and the new pest glyph I could see an unholy DK only having to use PS once per fight; at the beginning. I don't understand your logic.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that I was relating "Desecration" to DualWield. For those I think it is a "must have" to take in a talentbuild because every rotation using up to 2 cycles was using PS in every cycle and therefore keeping "Desecration" up nearly all the time.
I can't see PS spam happening. I just got on, and was curious as to exactly how much harder it was hitting for. On live, mine hits for ~500. On the PTR, it's around 1500. Both using a 17/0/54 spec, and I didn't have the new glyph. The way I see it, is now I'm going to do roughly 1k more damage when I need to refresh diseases, and when I'm tanking, that very first attack is now going to do that much more threat.
From the looks of things to me, with the Glyph of Scourge Strike and longer disease duration, increasing your chances to just continuing with Scourge Strike spam, Desecration is actually going to be up less than it would have before. I'm not seeing anything about PS yet that convinces me that it's going to be better to spam that every rotation rather than essentially having the same rotation I had before.
Totally agree. I don't see much of anything changing for the current cookie cutter 17/0/54 rotation except that we may be able to squeeze one more SS in before having to refresh diseases, if a refresh is needed at all. I have a feeling that the UB glyph will actually be pretty useful as a replacement for that 3rd glyph that is currently a "choose your own flavor" glyph, so long as pestilence doesn't become a major glyph. The only thing I am really debating is the usefulness of improved unholy presence.
Oh, and it seems the new Pest glyph is indeed that - a new glyph vs. replacing the old one, since my minor Pest glyph was still present. So the new one being a major is more than likely.
Totally agree. I don't see much of anything changing for the current cookie cutter 17/0/54 rotation except that we may be able to squeeze one more SS in before having to refresh diseases, if a refresh is needed at all. I have a feeling that the UB glyph will actually be pretty useful as a replacement for that 3rd glyph that is currently a "choose your own flavor" glyph, so long as pestilence doesn't become a major glyph. The only thing I am really debating is the usefulness of improved unholy presence.
I can't see Improved Unholy Presence outweighing standard Blood Presence for the dps aspect of the normal 17/0/54 rotation, though it's interesting in the movement aspect. It's less useful than before due to the loss of the raid wide buff, but I wonder if it might be worth it to throw one point in it (to equal the run speed enchant). I'm not sure, I guess it would depend on whether benefit of spending the talent points elsewhere would outweigh having to gem or enchant for the speed increase elsewhere.
As for UB glyph, I'm torn, I like both it and the DC glyph, but it seems like with 4pc T7 at least, we might be able to get more mileage out of the DC glyph, but I don't have any maths to back that up atm.
As for UB glyph, I'm torn, I like both it and the DC glyph, but it seems like with 4pc T7 at least, we might be able to get more mileage out of the DC glyph, but I don't have any maths to back that up atm.
I didn't think about the DC glyph, but I think to be absolutely sure that DC is better than UB we have to also factor in the following. Not only is the 10 extra seconds from the UB glyph worth some damage (I'd say probably around 1200-1500), but during those 10 seconds you will also be generating RP that will not have to be used toward refreshing UB, it can instead be used for DC. But like you said one would have to calculate the hard numbers behind each glyph just to be absolutely sure.
This will also change the rotation quite a bit. You will be using an unholy rune, therefore losing out on a SS. Is the haste of the ghoul going to make up for the loss of one SS? I doubt it. Now if they made ghoul frenzy consume RP then we would have a different situation. I suppose the only way to be absolutely sure that the ghoul would do more damage in the 15 seconds of frenzy compared to one SS would be to test it or do some napkin math, but I can't do this right now since I am at work
I'm not entirely sure why Ghoul Frenzy doesn't just improve the healing effect of Death Coil on our pets. We already have the option of using RP to heal our little zombie buddies, why not just make Ghoul Frenzy also apply a haste effect when we do? Lord knows we've got enough reasons not to want to burn our Unholy runes on a faster pet swing.
I'm not entirely sure why Ghoul Frenzy doesn't just improve the healing effect of Death Coil on our pets. We already have the option of using RP to heal our little zombie buddies, why not just make Ghoul Frenzy also apply a haste effect when we do? Lord knows we've got enough reasons not to want to burn our Unholy runes on a faster pet swing.
That's actually a pretty interesting idea- heal your pet to haste it with the 40 (or 32) RP. It would throw another variable in there that might be an interesting mechanic, rather than keep UB up, DC spam. You might have to think about weaving a pet heal in there every now and then for the hasted pet effect. Interesting.
02/25/09, 1:50 PM
