I ran some math on this the other day in attempt to prove that diseaseless wasn't really viable, and much to my surprise, that's not really what the numbers showed.

Assuming a blood w/ diseases rotation of:
IT PS HS HS DS <dump>
DS HS HS HS HS <dump>

and a diseaseless rotation of:
DS HS HS HS HS <dump>
HS HS DS HS HS <dump>

Both rotations generate the exact same amount of runic power (not counting IT glyph if you use it), though the diseaseless spec would free up points in epidemic for points in ravenous dead or morbidity, depending on your preference, but more on this later.

For w = weapon damage and assuming 33% crit, the damage done over 3 rotations from rune abilities (approximately a minute) will be on average

diseaseless: 36.66w + 22217.68
w/ diseases: 36.23w + 22104.77 + 2.38ap

Increase the crit to 50%, and you get

diseaseless: 42.63w + 25837.42
w/ diseases: 42.10w + 25625.86 + 2.43ap

To get w, you have (Wdps + (1/14)ap)*3.3 (3.3 is normalized 2h speed). In the case of a Betrayer and 4000ap, you have w = 1678.43 average damage. In order to account for death coil damage, let's assume a spec of 51/0/20 for blood w/ diseases. To make that diseaseless, move the 2 points from epidemic into morbidity. Each rotation will generate 110 RP per iteration, though diseaseless will generate more DCs via sudden doom. On average, diseaseless will generate 11.85 DCs that hit harder than blood w/ diseases' 10.95 DCs. All together after 3 rotations, using a Betrayer with 4k ap, ability damage will be around
.......................33% crit (dps).............50% crit (dps)
diseaseless: 104543.24 (1742.4) 120841.14 (2014)
w/ diseases: 109902.48 (1831.7) 125708.73 (2095.1)

I include calculations for two values of crit to illustrate that the value of crit is bigger for diseaseless than for blood w/ diseases, but that the difference isn't nearly enough to magically make diseaseless effective (even at 100% crit). In addition, you have to factor in an extra 9% physical damage from BV and an extra 4% damage on everything but IT, FF and BP (clearly favoring diseaseless). Adding those in yields an overall change of less than 5dps in the difference between diseaseless and blood w/ diseases.

In conclusion, the math presents that blood w/ diseases is the optimal dps rotation, though not by a huge margin. In practice, it comes down to whether you can squeeze all of the HS into the disease timers consistently, which depends heavily on the amount of target switching/moving around that has to happen in a fight.

(Disclaimer: Keep in mind that the above math assumed no raid buffs, assumed hit cap and didn't factor in for armor mitigation, which would make minimal differences at best, seeing as how both rotations are heavily reliant on physical damage.)

Shouldn't these be:

DS It PS HS HS <dump>
HS HS HS HS HS HS <dump>

and:

DS DS HS HS <Dump>
HS HS HS HS HS HS <dump>

Thanks for pointing those out, Tiki. I left out the math regarding DRW under the assumption that it would simply mirror what was already happening, and the 60 seconds is meant to be a snapshot of a longer dps cycle (assuming the setups of DS DS HS HS and DS IT PS HS HS), but ignoring the setup's effect on dps was bad of me, especially if you start with 0 RP.

All in all, I'm very much a fan of blood with diseases rather than without (love those huge crits), and the points you make further emphasize that blood w/ diseases is the optimal way to go.

Grondarg: DS DS HS HS followed by HSx6 produces the same strike totals, 8HS and 2DC per rotation as the one I used. As far as I've seen, it's just a matter of preference as to whether you like more GCDs for RP dumping after part 1 or if you like the same number of GCDs between each part. I always went with DS HSx4 because it was easier for me to maintain, not that either is particularly difficult.

First one would be

DS It PS HS HS <dump>
HS HS HS HS DS <dump>

IT & PS don't turn into deathrunes

I'm using Excel to try and compare diseased and diseaseless. If anyone had ideas about a good diseaseless rotation it would be helpful.

A good pair of rotations to compare would probably be:


HS-HS-DS-HS-HS-DC-DC
HS-HS-HS-HS-DS-DC

and

IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-DC-DC
DS-HS-HS-HS-HS-DC

Both are fairly simple and the only real difference is the diseases. This should make comparisons easier. In both cases, the 2 RP loss per cycle is made up by refreshing HoW every few rotations, or possibly using BT+HS.

Edit: As people will no doubt leap to point out, these are only the repeating parts of the cycle. Both rotations have a slightly different startup.

I'll use those for my early numbers we can get more in depth if need be I guess. Hopefully there will be a clear winner with those alone.

I will say that diseased blows diseaseless out of the water. This is purely because diseased scales better with AP. I never tested armor values above 0 however diseaseless is hit harder by armor. Weapon damage and crit both scale better with diseaseless than diseased but even at an impossible 100% crit chance and using voldrethar diseased was behind diseaseless at 5000 AP. Since even favoring diseaseless by giving 100% crit 100% ArP and a low 5000 AP doesn't allow it to overcome diseased I don't think it ever will.

Edit: To Lazareth: I tried that out and that didn't even do as well as the previous diseaseless rotation.

Edit 2: Ya i remember that quote and expected them to fix it if diseaseless did come out on top. It's just that with the switch from OB to DS I was wondering if the 0 impact diseases had on it would tip the scales back to diseaseless. But it seems Blizzard knew what they were doing since it takes numbers such as 100% crit 0 armor sub 3k AP and voldrethar for diseaseless to beat diseased.

Hey what should we do now that DS just got nerfed into the ground? Stick with DS specs or move back to OB?

Where do you see that? I've seen no mention of it being "nerfed" into the ground. Source?


My question is about stat weights. I was looking at the old stat weights done by zyrm I think, and wondered what changed for blood, if anything? I think the 25% buff to Haste and ArPen would be the only thing, correct? Anyone have some napkin math stat weights they'd like to share or link me to find one? I Searched the FAQ and the old Blood forum and didn't find anything.

Some napkin math:

SoVH = +380 to DC
SoA = +315 to DS

Standard rotations have 2 DS every rotation, with 3 DC in that same period. A rough modeling of Sudden doom is to apply 15% of a death coil to each HS, so with 6 HS per rotation thats 6(0.15) = .9 of another Death Coil.

Vengeful Heart: 380x3.9 = 1482 extra damage / rotation.
Awareness: 315x2 = 630 extra damage / rotaion.

Awareness does have the benefit of the MoM crit multiplier and a higher crit rate, but that should not be enough to overcome more than double base difference. Vengeance should be a pretty clear upgrade. Now only if I had done this before I let it go to the tank