I don't think there are HUGE flaws in my analysis, merely I was trying to provide the numbers that no one seemed willing to look at. And there are a couple of things about those numbers we need to remember.

1. They are based off my gear, which (sadly to say) is NOT Uldar ready.

2. These are the unbuffed stats, not full raid buffed like you would be.

I get the loss of parry, and I will miss it as well. But it is after all, based on RNG, which (we should all know by now) can be really friendly or can be really unfriendly. This is what I was trying to bring out. Is 20 secs of that increased parry really worth that 13% reduction? Certainly doesn't seem so when I hit UA to help me stay alive. And then others it seems more than fine.

I also feel I must stress that again, we don't know what Uldar will bring. There may be encounters that make this effect very powerful. Because we don't have any kind of shield block mechanism, perhaps this is the way of Blizzard to level the playing field. They did state several times they wanted to make encounters that any tank could tank, regardless of what type it was. They stated they didn't want encounters that you had to have a druid tank for example in order to succeed.

Finally, I feel this is a move by Blizzard to address the rapidly approaching armor cap. I don't think its beyond any stretch of imagination to theorycraft we will be pushing that cap in full Uldar gear. If that is indeed the case, the current UA would be even more useless except for the 5% parry. Currently we already have tanks that are pushing that cap if they glyph UA and have priest inspiration hit them at the same time.

I'm not exactly sure where the armor cap is. I think its somewhere around 48k for level 83 mobs. Thats 20k more armor then what I am sitting at unbuffed. I also don't think its unreasonable for a Uldar ready tank to be over 35K armor when fully buffed. This bumps that "9K hit turning point" much higher while still keeping you under the cap so you get the full effect.

Devloc stated that the CD for Raise Ghoul now begins when the ghoul dies. Therefore, with the changes to NotD, if your ghoul dies you will have to wait 30 seconds to rez him.

I also like the idea that our Death Coil would put the ghoul into a frenzy. And yes, NotD is really a must for the AoE reduction. My ghoul continues to attack saph during his air phase and does not die due to NotD.

Yah, basically I felt he was questioning the worth of NotD post 3.1, and I feel that regardless of when the CD starts, the talent is worth it for the AoE reduction, definitely agreed

The cd starts when summoning, at least for now on the PTR. That gives you a nice 30s cd on your ghoul.

This is my current assessment of the intended usage of the new 'auras.'

Imp Blood Presence: The healing component while in UP/FP seems like it could be useful for Blood tanks, and possibly PvP scenarios. The 10% increase healing in BP seems like it is primarily intended for PvP.

Imp Frost Presence: The spell reduction is great for Frost tanks (like me!), but the 10% health seems almost exclusively PvP targeted, although that IS a pretty nice PvP buff.

Imp Unholy Presence: This one is the most confusing. I believe that testing is still going on to determine how the 10% rune CD reduction fares again BP's +15% damage. The 15% run speed would be nice, but the builds I've been working up tend to skip it, and I can't see most people wanting to spend 2 points on something you can get from a boot enchant. Again though, it might be good for PvP.

That's just my assessment though. Does anyone see something I'm missing?

Hmm yeah, perhaps Obliterate will outperform it in most cases due to its damage dealt.

However, i feel Death Strike spec would be really situational, as i feel, with everything used, that its TPS would outshine Obliterates, but only if there is health to heal, as overhealing would not provide any threat.

It will be interesting to test the differences, but it could be argued also that death strike spec could provide a lot of survivability, depending on the boss you fight.

For example, Patchwerk, with its high damage output, could be an optimal death strike encounter.

But yeah i see your point, its damage is lower, and so the TPS would be focused on heals, which is too situational and thus too unreliable.

I can confirm this. I am, as we speak, watching the timer on Raise Dead tick down on PTR Broxigar, as my ghoul stands beside me.

Is this slated to change, or just a misunderstanding?

This is what the patch note says specifically. I may be mistaken, but my understanding was that this did not apply to the perma-ghoul, who has no duration. Rather it was a limiting factor on the base ghoul now that it has had it's cooldown/duration reduced, essentially making it a 4m cooldown - the duration remaining if you ghoul dies.

ie. 3 min CD 1min duration = 33% uptime
3 min CD starting at ghoul death, 1 min duration = 25% uptime

of course searching through

Based on my findings it appears that it may or may not be slated to change. Wowwiki states that the CD does not start until the ghouls death, but it appears that it may relate to untalented ghoul and not the perma-ghoul, as it is listed as a change to Raise Dead and not the talent.

Taken from wowwiki's 3.1 patch note section "Raise Dead: Duration lowered to 60 sec. and cooldown lowered to 3 min. The cooldown on this ability now begins when the pet dies rather than when it is summoned."

Maybe one can confirm this by trying to summon an untalented ghoul and see if the CD starts at summoning or at death.

Edit: Looks like Aisuken beat me to the punch. It would still be useful to see if the untalented ghoul reflects this change; if so it may be an indication that perma-ghoul does not suffer from this change.

Just hopped on the PTR and specced out of Master of Ghouls - Raise Dead's cooldown still begins on summoning.

This probably means they did not implement it correctly, which could also possibly mean that it may also be changed for the perma-ghoul too.

I don't see the point of death rune mastery IF you were using death strike as your main attack. Same reason I didn't get Subversion(I assume you meant that instead of Butchery). I picked up Morbidity(and Corpse Explosion) to bolster blood's bad AE threat. Unless, of course, blood boil turns out to work just as well.

How is the healing on bloodworms being improved next patch?

I wanted to comment that taking a point out of CE and IRT and moving them both to Sudden Doom would probably be a better choice. I also highly doubt using 130RP with DS instead of using it on RS would be a better decision besides on fights like Sapphiron where you take massive damage from melee and magic attacks and you could put the spell book icons on your bar and just not use RS (if your DPS won't pull off you).

I'm almost certain Frost will be the spec most of us are going to do clear Ulduar with (tank wise) and after that I'm sure everyone will be testing Blood/Unholy specs, I know I will.

There is no point in DRM if you used an Obliterate or Death Strike rotation besides for making D runes available for BB on AoE pulls. I personally think DnD>IT>PS>Pest//BB>BB>DS>DS// will be enough AoE threat, obviously use the Death Strikes on targets that you have low threat on.

What's your reasoning for frost being superior to blood and unholy for Ulduar? If anything, I'd think WoTN and Vampiric Blood would give blood the definitive edge in terms of hp and time to live. Unholy isn't bad either with the increase in avoidance that Ulduar gear will give. In fact, I'd think a blocking mechanic like UA would be specifically a comparative weakness on new boss fights.

Imp Blood: I completely disagree; this seems nigh worthless for tanks. Gaining 4% of your damage as healing while tanking is so minimal that I can't see wasting points in it, especially since that healing doesn't even cause threat (at least, regular blood presence healing doesn't, so I'm assuming IBP won't either). It is definitely great for pvp, and a decent place for pve filler as it will make it a little easier for you to be healed through raid damage.

Imp Frost: Disappointing from a tank perspective--while it's nice that frost gets some additional spell mitigation, which blood and unholy already had, if you wanted to tank a spell-heavy encounter, it's just not comparable with Magic Suppression (which has one more rank for 2% more) and AMZ. Again very nice for pvp, and I agree pretty weak for pve. It still works as filler because you have more health and are less likely to die to aoe and whatnot, but I'd rather have more healing taken to save healer mana, which is useful even when taking unavoidable damage.

Imp Unholy: This is not two points for something available on an enchant. This is a rare class ability that allows you to move _faster_ than people with a boot enchant. I realize the jury's still out on whether there are viable IUP rotations, but even in blood presence, I don't see skipping this in any unholy build. I'd gladly give up 2% dps from another talent to have +15% run speed instead of giving up 32 AP on boots and only having 8% run speed. Could be a good spot for a normal dual spec here, though--if there are low-movement fights in Ulduar, have one spec with IUP and one without.

Unless I'm missing something a near perfect gear DK in FP should be around 30k armor, I don't know how to buff up 5k extra armor. Are you counting the priest/shaman armor buff procs?

With that armor, and raid buffs mobs still will hit you for around 13k for the heavy hitters. I don't really pay too much attention to max hits taken but I know I saw Maly hit me for 13k and pretty sure Patch hit me for 12k, KT around 11k.

With those sorts of hits coming in the current UA blows away the new UA as long as it doesn't push you over armor cap.

Something else to keep in mind, armor doesn't go up very quickly. It's for the most part strictly based on ilvl and a bump from ilvl 200 to 213 is worth ~50 armor to the chest. Gloves is only a 25 armor boost.

So basically the reason people don't like the change to UA is that it is in every way worse than the current UA under any reasonable raid circumstances. And thats before you take into account the loss of 5% parry.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm lamenting the apparent loss of the VotW/Frost build. Without a viable form of AoE the spec will be dead. Perhaps it could still work if you pick up DRM and prepare for BB spam, but I'm not so sure it would be viable.

I'm confused by your post. You will have HB, BB, and DnD if needed. Normally, I don't use DnD anymore - just purely HB and BB while tab targeting through the mobs to get a FS in on each of them keeps me ahead of the DPS by a small margin.

Frost will still have viable AoE form - it won't be Unholy "Stick to me like super glue" AoE but it passes.

(Spamming Mass-BB is feasible, too.)

This post is under the assumption that the Glyph of Pestilence stays as the new "Refreshes the disease duration on current target."

Everyone seems to think this is an over-powered change and will make PS->IT a once-per-boss sequence.

However, I think we are forgetting that Pestilence uses a blood rune, and DOES NOT come back as a death rune under Reaping (even in the new talent tree). We would have to make certain to use a death runes to cycle Pestilence+BS, otherwise we would split the Blood Runes into 1 blood/1 death making our lives miserable.

Even if I am wrong, it seems that trying to use Pestilence to refresh diseases will make us have to pay a lot more attention to Unholy rotation (SS Glyph making it even more a pain to know when to save or use death runes).

I think I am one of the few that would not take the new Pestilence glyph, just because of the hassle.

Of course, they could fix it by adding Pestilence to Reaping, but I doubt it. I think the only sane decision would be to remove all the listed abilities from Death Rune Mastery and Reaping and simply put it that when the base runes are used they come back as death runes (no matter what ability used them). They also need to be 1 talent point abilities as no one who uses them puts in only 1-2 points.

Not if HB is a 51 point talent. Can't reach VotTW and get HB at the same time.

I agree it's not good for unholy, but frost's Blood of the North includes Pestilence instead of Blood Boil. Standard 2H unholy already keeps diseases up largely with Scourge Strike glyph.

Its not the best for Frost because Blood Strike hits decently hard, as well as Icy Touch.

Using a rune to do 0 damage is a bit of a tough sell. I think it might work for blood only because of how PS and IT dont work with death rune mastery, and HS requires only 1 blood.