Once the rotation smooths out, you'll fit in more DCs. One thing i like to do is build up enough RP (66+) to DC right before the DS. You have a free GCD before both runes come back.

For me, the least intuitive part of the rotation was using death runes for IT/PS. Practice helps People seem to often misjudge diseased before they smooth out their rotation.

Another thing that helped my dps was knowing when to shift to diseaseless. Trash, boss adds, when "run out" is imminent, etc.

yeah, I can see diseaseless still being useful in some situations, no need to refresh the diseases if say you know the mob will be dead in a few seconds, but it is probably as you say, you'll be able to fit in death coils better when you get to know the rotations and dot-timers better. Will be working alot on this now, and will post a new log after the next time we're in ulduar with some thoughts.
thanks for the help

Why would you want to use a spec that is only useful in the last few seconds of a fight?

The fact remains: Diseaseless, as awesome as it was, isn't really viable any more. Sure; some people have been able to make pretty numbers with it, but look at the "[America's Next Top Raid DPS] Cycle 2: DATA" thread. None of the top ten players is using diseaseless. Let it rest in peace, please.

You may be correct about diseaseless, but that thread you referenced hasn't been updated in quite some time, at least not the OP.

Not a spec, just rotation. If i think the mob (boss, trash, add, w/e) will be dead in 10s or I'll have to run away, I don't apply diseases. ...and use more DS, less HS. Simple as that.

Diseased needs the full two rune set cycle to come out on top (which it does every time when you get 20s on the mob).

Not disagreeing with your conclusion, but don't rely on that post for anything at the moment. Darkside hasn't updated the post since mid-April, so it only has the first round or so of XT kills.

It's not much, but you won't find another talent which provides you ~2% damage for one point. Additionally aoe damage isn't important in serious Ulduar fights aka hard modes. Not even Thorim.

Actually, if you're clever in the ways you use DRW, it can be a massive AoE boost. For instance, by dropping DRW when you have 2x Blood and 4x Death runes, you can Blood Boil 6x times for an incredible amount of AoE damage. DRW will also drop a second DnD and so forth.

If it's really that low for you, maybe you're misusing it. Looking at some examples from my most recent parse, DRW was 8.3% of my damage on Ignus, 6.1% on RS, 6% on XT, 6.6% on Hodir, 7% on Council.

And that's not even counting how awesome it is whenever you can AoE, as Darkside pointed out. It's 8-9% of my dps on trash because of that.

I thought someone reported the blood boil bug as being fixed a few pages back.

Still though, DRW is alot better than any other talent you could get by skipping it, and it provides another cooldown to use on phases where you need to burst something down fast. You also don't need to 'waste' 3 talent points for it, RPM is not a requirement at all (though keep the glyph, it's pretty good).
2% is kind of low, make sure you use it every cooldown and time it with speed pots/heroism and stuff.

I have just recently added DRW to my rotation, I try to fit it in right before i have to refresh diseases that way I can double stack, I haven't been able to get ahold of a glyph for it yet, so I try to use when RP is maxed, I haven't closely looked at how much of my damage it does but I will post when I figure it out.

It has been quite nice with aoe not so after BB fix. I feel that my drw usage could use some learning but problem is setting it up "perfectly" is issue. Since you want to have full RP bar and in the start of the rotation for diseases at least I'm wasting often RP and even delaying my rune rotation if CD is almost up.

With death runes up yes aoe can be awesome but it's not like you can easily again set it up for next aoe pack coming at you since we're tied to 8-10sec rune refresh.

I guess I have to browse a bit other people logs and have some L2P thing with it but I think I'll try UB + UB glyph on next Ulduar run..

I admit I'm liking diseased rotation when the fight allows it but interestingly the Yogg fight is completely diseaseless with the exception of corrupters and the brain.

I wasn't talking about diseaseless as a spec, but as a rotation as stated by Stein, the specs are pretty much similar anyway.

I'm fiddling abit with either using 1 point in outbreak (for flat out dps increase, the average crit of PS went up from 2.4k to 2.8k) or 1 point in epidemic to make it easier to hit the HS's within the disease timer.

I'll let you know when i have some decent data on it.

I find RPM being less of an upgrade than 1 extra point in morbidity and one in either epidemic or outbreak.

I have never done diseaseless on purpose before but I am led to believe it may perform well but its quite benefical to DKs for all but Frost strike which doesn't contend in the Blood tree. One main reason I see now for diseases other than DPS is with the new changes to healing and mana regen, I can help the healers by DS and healing myself to ease the burden on them. One good fight is Deconstructor and its tantrum. I can heal myself and allow the healers to heal others so less mana used and less deaths.

For everyone considering diseaseless, there is truly only one point at which diseaseless will overcome diseased: Short fights. Here's an example of a decision tree:


This is very general and the benefits of going diseaseless are still skewed, even for short fights. The point of this overall is still moot because the number of < 20 sec fights where this is applies is extremely low. What we are really concerned with is still boss dps, and improving it. Diseaseless isn't, and probably won't ever be again, doing this.

Hello guys, regarding the recent change of ArP in 3.1 I was curious to how certain items would benefit Blood DPS.

I am gearing for pre-raid at the moment, and I was wondering if the Titanium Choker/Band was worth it to pick up. It boasts ArP, basically I know its good pre-raid, but I want to know if the items will last a long time, or if they will still both be replaced in Naxx.

Thanks in advance!

[Titanium Impact Choker]
[Titanium Impact Band]

Yes, get them if you can. There are no Necks or Rings with Armor Penetration that drop in Naxxramas, with the exception of the two (iLevel 213 and 226) physical DPS necks from the Sapphiron/Malygos quest line. Look elsewhere in the thread for detailed analysis of Armor Penetration, but in short, the Titanium Impact jewelery is a good starting point for blood.

The WoW Developers are considering a change to ArP in form of a hardcap:

Source: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Armor Penetratation - Lack of a Cap?



This will most likely turn the tables on 4t8.5 vs. full ArP gear once again. Also Grim's Toll and Mjolnir Runestone will diminish greatly in value as their proc is currently pushing practically any DK with a bit of ArP Gear over 100%.

Hey guys,

I play 51/2/18 Blood DPS and in the last Ulduar runs (10man and 25man) I analysed my recount statistics. I saw that Blood-Caked Blades only cause <1.5% of my overall damage (proc-rate seems to be too low for me), so I'd like to know if I should put those three talent points into Ravenous Dead instead?

I think that this would increase my overall DPS, since all my attacks gain more AP through Strength and thus I should do more damage on each attack -- what I would like to know is, if this will outbeat the <1.5% damage from Blood-Caked Blades?

Cheers, Pierre

Ravenous Dead > BCB > Necrosis, or at very least, Ravenous Dead > Necrosis. Also, you don't need 2 points in epidemic, only 1. The primary function of diseases is to make your HS and DS hit harder. You can dump your RP into Death Coil on a disease-less target with little ill-effect. I'd recommend dropping 2 points of Necrosis and 1 point of Epidemic for 3/3 Ravenous Dead.

I doubt it would really make a difference. Being at 100% is still a huge ways away to achieve. I mean I have almost full armor pen items and im only at about 35%. Of course I am still missing alot of peices. The value of the stat wont change it will just be not going above cap. For instance if we do reach 100% without the help of Grim Toll the only thing that needs to be swapped out are a few peices for hit gear. So the Bitter cold armguards we would get from H-hodir would just be replaced with Decimators armguards. Also the Abominations shoulders would be replaced with the Shoulderplates of the eternal from auriya. That is only of course if with the current armor pen set provided by Lushen we are indeed over 100% or somewhere near it. Which I highly doubt we are.