From what it sounds like was that there were 2 DKs. One Diseaseless Blood, and a Disease Unholy. From my impressions, the Unholy would apply 2-3 diseases depending on spec. So in actuality, he was benefiting from the diseases when fighting in groups. However, when he was fighting the dummies, he would have to apply them himself. I think this would make all the difference in the world.
This can't be the reason. DK's don't get their damage bonuses from other DK's (except Ebon Plaguebringer's damage-taken bonus). Only your own diseases give a bonus, as Zero00 had indicated.
Regarding why it didn't generate the hurry flurry of discussion someone was expecting...
The fact that Pestilence wasn't used in AoE environments is a pretty massive blow to Unholy (two buffed diseases ticking and a lot of extra damage for BB/UB from EP), so not even getting into the details of each point of a spec, gear, etc., I can't really say it was a representative test. Additionally, the similar performance on a test dummy conflicting with the different live performance indicates that there was something wrong with one (or both) of the tests.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see things tried out, but when "unexpected" results come out of sketchy testing, it leads me to believe the results are sketchy too.
The item that stood out for me this time reading through the notes (That I never noticed before) was:
• Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating.
• Haste Rating: Shamans, Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.
My question is, has anyone devised a way to actually test this? As we Death Knights have a ton of abilities that ignore armor, and abilities that increase our haste (UP and IIT). Has anyone actually re-created the original ArmorPen and Haste math on the test realms, to see if they are still craptacular stats, or something we might need to look into acquiring?
I apologize if this has already been covered, but using the search function defintely did not lead me to any posts that had.
The item that stood out for me this time reading through the notes (That I never noticed before) was:
• Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating.
• Haste Rating: Shamans, Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.
My question is, has anyone devised a way to actually test this? As we Death Knights have a ton of abilities that ignore armor, and abilities that increase our haste (UP and IIT). Has anyone actually re-created the original ArmorPen and Haste math on the test realms, to see if they are still craptacular stats, or something we might need to look into acquiring?
I apologize if this has already been covered, but using the search function defintely did not lead me to any posts that had.
ArP calculation is currently buggy on the PTR, so it's pointless to math out the value of ArP until they fix it and we know how exactly it is calculated.
Regarding haste: no math that i know of, but i doubt it is a much better stat. crappy stat*1.3 = slightly less crappy stat i guess
ArP calculation is currently buggy on the PTR, so it's pointless to math out the value of ArP until they fix it and we know how exactly it is calculated.
Regarding haste: no math that i know of, but i doubt it is a much better stat. crappy stat*1.3 = slightly less crappy stat i guess
Actually, crappy stat*1.3 is somewhat interesting when you consider that it would push haste in-line with another sort of crappy stat for most specs- Agility =P Kind of turns our current tier gear into slightly less crappy itemization. Still pretty crappy though I'll admit.
The math for haste isn't terribly hard to do. Not for the white damage portion of your DPS anyways.
I've found my white damage accounts for 20-25% of my DPS typically. I'm rolling with 356 haste rating (10.86%) right now due to the large quantities of haste on all the good gear that I've had the opportunity to pick up. Using simple math my haste is accounting for 2-2.5% of my total damage just through white damage. (10.86% of white dmg)
If my haste were to be 30% more effective then it would go from 10.86% to 14.12%
Using the numbers from a recent 25 man Naxx (WWS) on Kel'Thuzad
22% of my damage came in the form of white damage. 231629/1039508
With 0 haste that should have been 231629/1.1083=208995
With 30% more effective Haste it would be 208995*(1.1412)=238505
A net gain of 6876 damage (Plus whatever small effect it has on Necrosis and BCS damage)
Which is an approx DPS increase of 28.3 DPS...call it 30 DPS with extra Necrosis and BCS damage.
Actually, crappy stat*1.3 is somewhat interesting when you consider that it would push haste in-line with another sort of crappy stat for most specs- Agility =P Kind of turns our current tier gear into slightly less crappy itemization. Still pretty crappy though I'll admit.
The key word in your comment on tier gear being "slightly." It's not very interesting for classic 2H specs, but for DW specs that already want a fair bit of haste (at minimum to get an extra GCD in their cycles) it's a pretty nice buff.
Actually, crappy stat*1.3 is somewhat interesting when you consider that it would push haste in-line with another sort of crappy stat for most specs- Agility =P Kind of turns our current tier gear into slightly less crappy itemization. Still pretty crappy though I'll admit.
I was under the impression that the 23 Haste to cloak was a more effective DPS enchant than was the 22 Agil. Would that not indicate that Haste was already > Agility?
Also with all the ArP being added into the next tier and the new badge gear it doesn't sound like itemization is getting any better for DKs in general. Pretty similar mindset as the haste buff: buff to bad stat = slightly less bad stat. Now for BLOOD it will probably make a huge difference. ArP really isnt a bad stat for Blood DKs.
Buffing the build that doesn't use physical damage much + Buffing physical dmg stats to be more effective = confusing.
I'd be skeptical of using Deconstructor as a baseline fight. Its such an AE heavy that just spamming BB on the adds, which a Blood spec will have +35% damage, and there are a lot of adds, could easily artificially inflate the damage.
There is aoe phases but you can only really hit one corner at a time, and the amount of damage you can put out is pretty minimal as they die rather quickly. The biggest advantage would come from being able to heart strike the 2 major ads which have considerable health. Regardless, this was a 10 minute fight, and most of the damage was just only one target. Diseaseless blood has always been a spike spec that slowly loses DPS throughout the fight but to sustain this much DPS over 10 minutes confuses even me. I generally run Unholy. There has been cuts to the spec, yes, but I wouldn't count it completely out especially with how long the DRW stay out atm. I still hit incredibly hard with OB and HS without diseases. I'd love to test it out tonight but I'm on the sidelines for tonights boss due to log in problems, guess we shall see.
The problem I see with applying Diseases for this spec is that it takes almost double the time to apply both, then only OB once for them to dissapear for just extra damage, not an entire hit that will be up faster.
Glyph of Diseases is supposedly in the game but talking to my guilds Scribe you can't actually learn any of the new Glyphs, even though they exist. So you can't even try out said rotations atm.
Which is an approx DPS increase of 28.3 DPS...call it 30 DPS with extra Necrosis and BCS damage.
Don't forget the Ghoul gets 100% of your haste, so the Ghoul's autoattack will also be somewhat better.
I think that would make 23 Haste the top cloak enchant for all dps builds, which it isn't atm (DW = Haste, 2H = Agility).
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.'
blood strike at 50%. 50%*15%*15%*45%*20 = 115% with the nerf to obliterate blood strike will destroy it now.
how does this stack up vs a sigil'd obliterate? would be interesting to know.
someone better at math needs to calculate that I would think. but from just what i can see 80%*10%*10%*12.5%*12.5% *20%= 147.5% for obliterate
now, it looks good on paper, but from a logical perspective 6 rune cooldowns vs 2 rune cooldowns.
this is where it gets hard for me to caculate for me heh.
Ah well, guess I'll just have to run some tests tonight myself.
So, I ended up having less time than I had hoped to do some diseaseless testing. Real life can be such a pain sometimes.
Anyway, just a quick run down on what I did. I did a few short runs against the boss dummies on the PTR and Live. Both were at about 70% health, strangely enough. Spec on Live was the standard 51/0/20 diseaseless build, and spec on PTR was 51/1/19 (with 1 in RPM, and 2 in Epidemic; like I said I had very little time or I would have changed those 3 points and put them in BCB). Rotation on Live was the standard diseaseless OB-OB-HS-HS until I had full RP, then Hysteria+Ghoul+DRW then OB-OB-HS-HS-ERW and then OB-OB-HS-HS-Dump rotation. On PTR the only difference was that the Ghoul was up from the start, otherwise it was the exact same rotation. I was in Blood Presence and HoW was always used before engaging the dummy, and refreshed near the end. No other buffs were active. Length of the tests was determined by the cooldown on DRW (i.e: when the cooldown ended, I stopped DPSing).
Strangely enough, diseaseless on the PTR (even with a less than optimal diseaseless build) was about 300DPS higher than on Live.
Maybe, just maybe, diseaseless isn't as dead as we all thought (or hoped).
I really would like to see some more testing on this. We all took it for granted (looking at the changes) that diseaseless was dead. That might not be the case after all.
blood strike at 50%. 50%*15%*15%*45%*20 = 115% with the nerf to obliterate blood strike will destroy it now. how does this stack up vs a sigil'd obliterate? would be interesting to know.
This will entirely depend of sigils and set bonuses. On live with my current gear unholy presence and 4xIT 1xOB on second rotation still does more damage than blood presence and heavy OB/FS rotation. It's all about rune power feed for FS. This changes only with awareness sigil (which I don't have).
Most effective build for "shaman" build is still Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft you will just lose HB which is big loss overall for the build. Depends of sigils and set bonuses BS might replace OB in second rotation tho but bit risky for dropping ap buff.
I was under the impression that the 23 Haste to cloak was a more effective DPS enchant than was the 23 Agil. Would that not indicate that Haste was already > Agility?
Also with all the ArP being added into the next tier and the new badge gear it doesn't sound like itemization is getting any better for DKs in general. Pretty similar mindset as the haste buff: buff to bad stat = slightly less bad stat. Now for BLOOD it will probably make a huge difference. ArP really isnt a bad stat for Blood DKs.
Buffing the build that doesn't use physical damage much + Buffing physical dmg stats to be more effective = confusing.
Actually the agility enchant is 22 agility, not 23. The haste is 23. For "some" builds, even though Haste is slightly worse than agility, that point might make haste very slightly better. I prefer the 22 agility based on the stat weights in the Unholy dps discussion, but it could be that if stat weights include ghoul (which drives up the relative value of strength and haste) that the 23 haste is better for Unholy too. I don't think it's much though, I'm not bothering to re-enchant my cloak for it. If haste gets boosted though, the 23 haste may be clearly better than the 22 agility for cloak, even for 2H builds though.
Don't forget the Ghoul gets 100% of your haste, so the Ghoul's autoattack will also be somewhat better.
I think that would make 23 Haste the top cloak enchant for all dps builds, which it isn't atm (DW = Haste, 2H = Agility).
I believe one of the DPS spreadsheets currently lists Haste as better for both already. I don't know how accurate it is...my faith in those spreadsheeets for DKs isn't exactly 100% yet. Though even with a 2Her you get a significant amount of damage from Necrosis and BCS. The haste adds to your PPM rate on them regardless, and when they're based off a 2Her the extra, bigger, procs are nice. Either way I'd say it's mostly personal preference on live. Would be nice to have a concensus #1 if one pulls ahead significantly.
(Edit: "23 Agil" was a mis-type due to posting at work and in a hurry. )
From a blood spec point of view with 10% Arpen with blood-gorged , with bonus to armor penetration and as it seems that there will be some on many loots is it worthy enought to think of stacking it ?
Also does the interest of armor penetration increase when you stack it ?
I believe one of the DPS spreadsheets currently lists Haste as better for both already. I don't know how accurate it is...my faith in those spreadsheeets for DKs isn't exactly 100% yet. Though even with a 2Her you get a significant amount of damage from Necrosis and BCS. The haste adds to your PPM rate on them regardless, and when they're based off a 2Her the extra, bigger, procs are nice. Either way I'd say it's mostly personal preference on live. Would be nice to have a concensus #1 if one pulls ahead significantly.
(Edit: "23 Agil" was a mis-type due to posting at work and in a hurry. )
Unholy is the only APE's I can be fully confident in (because my spreadsheets have a biased attention to "my" spec)
STAT
APE (Unholy 17/0/54)
APE (Blood 51/1/19)
1AP
1
1
1STR
2.66
2.69
1CRT
1.29
1.47
1HIT(before spell cap)
0.88
0.69
1Haste
1.31
1.36
1Exp
1.5
2.10
1ArP
1.08
2.29
1AGI
0.95
1.02
1Armor
0.03
0.03
1dps (wpn)
6.24
9.11
For unholy, Haste is = to Crit now and APR is better than AGI. Fun times.
For Blood nothing has really changed. STR, EXP and ArP are still king
Sorry no frost numbers yet due to it's state of flux currently.
Disclaimer: Blah blah blah Grain of Salt blah blah.
Also
Originally Posted by Gumibear
Those numbers should come with a disclaimer that they were not meant to be compared spec to spec, only to AP within that specific spec.
The number for Unholy's weapon DPS can just as easily mean that AP has better scaling overall in Unholy as it could mean that Blood scales better with weapon DPS. You're not getting the whole picture by comparing numbers on the Unholy side to the Blood side because they say nothing about how much DPS each spec is getting per AP, which is a pain in the ass to find out since that's only relative to gear.
So, I ended up having less time than I had hoped to do some diseaseless testing. Real life can be such a pain sometimes.
Anyway, just a quick run down on what I did. I did a few short runs against the boss dummies on the PTR and Live. Both were at about 70% health, strangely enough. Spec on Live was the standard 51/0/20 diseaseless build, and spec on PTR was 51/1/19 (with 1 in RPM, and 2 in Epidemic; like I said I had very little time or I would have changed those 3 points and put them in BCB). Rotation on Live was the standard diseaseless OB-OB-HS-HS until I had full RP, then Hysteria+Ghoul+DRW then OB-OB-HS-HS-ERW and then OB-OB-HS-HS-Dump rotation. On PTR the only difference was that the Ghoul was up from the start, otherwise it was the exact same rotation. I was in Blood Presence and HoW was always used before engaging the dummy, and refreshed near the end. No other buffs were active. Length of the tests was determined by the cooldown on DRW (i.e: when the cooldown ended, I stopped DPSing).
Strangely enough, diseaseless on the PTR (even with a less than optimal diseaseless build) was about 300DPS higher than on Live.
Maybe, just maybe, diseaseless isn't as dead as we all thought (or hoped).
I really would like to see some more testing on this. We all took it for granted (looking at the changes) that diseaseless was dead. That might not be the case after all.
Just because diseaseless on PTR did more DPS than on Live doesn't mean it is more viable that a disease'd rotation. You need to compare your numbers on PTR Diseasesless vs PTR Diseased and see how your results are.
Dead != Not more DPS.
Dead == Not as much as a rotation with diseases
I'm not saying that it isn't as much as a diseased rotation, I haven't been on the PTR long enough to test anything, I'm just saying you can't compare live to PTR for one specific build/style and call it not dead without seeing how it fares against the alternatives on the PTR.
If, however, it is true that diseaseless is still competitive, I wouldn't expect it to be much longer, and GC himself has said they don't want DKs ignoring diseases. A rotation should be built around them, according to him.
One thing that would stop diseaseless dead in it's tracks would be to make Obliterate use 2 Frost runes (kind of makes sense, since it is a Frost ability). That however would probably destroy the use of Obliterate in any spec.
Those numbers are very interesting, if preliminary. I take it those are DW specs though? And do the numbers change for 2 handed weapons?
No those are 2H specs. I don't think there is a viable 17/0/54 DW build. If you are looking at the Weapon damage and that is where you drew your conclusion, Unholy is and has always been less about the size of the weapon and more about the overall package.
Those numbers should come with a disclaimer that they were not meant to be compared spec to spec, only to AP within that specific spec.
The number for Unholy's weapon DPS can just as easily mean that AP has better scaling overall in Unholy as it could mean that Blood scales better with weapon DPS. You're not getting the whole picture by comparing numbers on the Unholy side to the Blood side because they say nothing about how much DPS each spec is getting per AP, which is a pain in the ass to find out since that's only relative to gear.
No those are 2H specs. I don't think there is a viable 17/0/54 DW build. If you are looking at the Weapon damage and that is where you drew your conclusion, Unholy is and has always been less about the size of the weapon and more about the overall package.
Oh no. I'm just not very familiar with DW at all, so when I saw haste with such a bonus I thought it was DW white damage. Those are some impressive numbers, can't wait to see the new stats for frost. Will go a long way in determining itemization for threat.
Just because diseaseless on PTR did more DPS than on Live doesn't mean it is more viable that a disease'd rotation. You need to compare your numbers on PTR Diseasesless vs PTR Diseased and see how your results are.
Dead != Not more DPS.
Dead == Not as much as a rotation with diseases
I'm not saying that it isn't as much as a diseased rotation, I haven't been on the PTR long enough to test anything, I'm just saying you can't compare live to PTR for one specific build/style and call it not dead without seeing how it fares against the alternatives on the PTR.
If, however, it is true that diseaseless is still competitive, I wouldn't expect it to be much longer, and GC himself has said they don't want DKs ignoring diseases. A rotation should be built around them, according to him.
Problem is you can't effectively test the new rotations yet as there is no real access to the glyphs you'd need. It's obvious these builds will be evolving with new ptr patches, gear, etc.
The big thing here to me is that diseaseless blood has performed just as well if not better in some situations that I've tested and the spec is supposed to be no longer effective, when that is *currently* not true.
DK Threat and Tanking
We need to do some more testing on DK threat, and additional feedback in that dept. is useful.
It gets tricky for a number of reasons. Some DKs go for some kind of health or mitigation buff in every possible way and then are surprised their threat is low. Threat is something you are supposed to care about as a tank, and gear accordingly. The question is whether DKs who sacrifice a little bit of mitigation (in the broad sense -- I don't strictly mean armor) for dps then fail at tanking encounters. We don't know that yet because the DK tanking nerfs just hit (and Blade Barrier was broken).
Some DKs blow IBF and Rune Strike every time they can, and then wonder where their runic power went. I don't know that just losing 10% avoidance from Blade Barrier makes the difference between getting Rune Strike procs or not. Again, some DKs use the defense runeforge enchant instead of the avoidance one because of their gear choices (or luck therein) elsewhere.
We need to see the effects of losing Bo Sanc on all the tanks. Some never had it before, so all and all, that change is beneficial for the game. (Source)
[...] Death and Decay works fine for group AE. It's not designed to be a great single target threat spell.
Rune Strike isn't the most exciting ability in the world, but it does the job, which is giving DKs a high threat move that doesn't use a global and can't generally be used for dps. Creating a new high threat ability, which is something we might eventually do, is complicated because we would not want it to be used for dps and we would not want it to compete with all the other rune and runic power abilities.
We can understand why you might Rune Strike less with these changes. What you haven't convinced us of is that DKs are doomed if they Rune Strike less. Are dps classes pulling off of you today on live? What is your highest possible threat per second? What will it be after these changes? (I saw one estimate of 5% less threat.) Would it be higher if you made some gear changes? Will you die too ofter with those gear changes? I'm trying to get players to just stop saying "If I Rune Strike less, nobody will let me tank."
Scent for Blood is a reasonable talent for us to look at in order to provide a little more rp per sec to the tanking DK. (Source)
Avoidance nerf effects for blue-geared DKs
You might not be able to step into Ulduar in blue gear, but you don't need crazy high avoidance numbers for most content in the game including Naxxramas. The intent of Rune Strike isn't that every hit becomes one. This is more true of Heroic Strike for warriors, but even then it's only in high rage situations.
One mistake that new tanks tend to make is to go overboard on defensive stats and ignore threat generation. For example, I know some older warrior guides would sometimes suggest going with a high threat weapon for that one slot. DKs do struggle a little to reach the defense "cap" but beyond that, you can probably tank in a lot less than full T7, especially if your group is not also new to all of their roles. (Source)
What noob DK's are they looking at? Seems to me that most of us here are in agreement (tanking-wise anyway) that after gearing for uncrittable you gear for threat first and stam when you can get away with it. I'm sitting happily at hit/expertise soft cap with my VotTW build and I certainly don't have best in slot yet still have 29.1k hp unbuffed. Is it the best? No, but its good enough for the content so far (except Sarth 3D, obviously).
I find it interesting they seem to think this is an issue. The only threat problems that I'm aware of is the single target threat Unholy has and the AOE threat Blood sometimes experiences. But I didn't think it was THAT bad.
And their comment about DnD strikes me as odd too. Of course its better for AOE tanking. That doesn't take its effectiveness away in single target though. Its been proven mathematically that its marginally better then any standard single target rotation if you can weave it in every so often.
There are some interesting comments in here though. Like them considering bringing bosanc back to full effect. Or increasing sent of bloods rp renewal. These seem like comments in a positive direction after several tanking nerfs.
03/10/09, 2:48 PM
