I think the main take away is that the previously held belief that no matter what you always gem for STR and not ArP still holds true. It would be nice to see a WWS of 2 weeks of consecutive Uld in the same gear with a complete gemming swap though. It's something I've considered doing just to see what happens.

I've been looking for more clarification on using Awareness and Vengeful Heart but i haven't had much luck. I've just speced blood again since post 3.1 and have been trying to decide on the 2 sigils.

All ive been able to do is dummy testing and the numbers are very close which bothers me since the dummy doesn't have armor debuffs currently applied. Another fact that bothers me is that my DS tool tip is saying +374 without Awareness and +904 /w. Even with talents I should not see a 50% increase in dmg, is this a tool tip error or is this actually the correct bonus dmg im getting from Awareness. If this is true then with the high crit rate of DS along with MoM Awareness should easily beat out Vengeful Heart.

Anyone with both Sigils can test this for themselves that the tool tip does indeed say +374 without and +904 with.

Anyone know anything about this or would like to offer some clarification?

This has already been tested and the general consensus is that Awareness is only superior for unholy specs at present. Without rehashing the math, the general concept is this:

You DS to get abom might and your death runes up.
You HS to consume said death runes and do so far more than you will ever DS.
Your SD will proc said DCs on top of the RP dumping you are doing at the end of each rotation.

Overall by sheer volume of DCs going out and the significant buff to it, you will almost always get a better deal out of the VH sigil. You shouldn't be DSing more than is necessary, thus the awareness benefit is significantly impaired as you will HS/DC much more than you could ever hope to DS.

Our raid last night I had 368 Death coils, to 152 Death Strikes. Last week had a similar distribution 328 to 132. So typically you'll be firing off a DC about 2.5 times more often than Death Striking.

First of all, I'd like to say hello, as this is my first post on this forums.
I've been playing DK for just a week at lvl80, and I'm looking forward to improving my DPS. My recent dps on 10man raid bosses(VoA, Naxx) was between 2,9k-3,4k. I do around 2,35k on boss dummy in ebon hold using IT-PS-DS-HS-HS-DC-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS rotation. Having that said I have one major question which I didnt found up to date answer for: should i switch to the Sigil of Haunted Dreams or just stick to the starting one till i aqquire Sigil of Awarness? Most answers are pre-haste change, so I hope you dont mind that question. My other concern is gemming: should i go for +16expertise gems(I'm still trying to get the Gundrak ring with its 38expertise) or should i stick to str gems? If i dont change the sigil i should have set gaunlets tomorrow, and I hope that will boost my dps a bit. Here's my DK profile.

No and no.

Assuming Haunted Dreams is PPM, which most of the 'chance' items are for normalization, the haste buff will not make any difference in uptime, making this still the most inexplicably bad sigil available. You will be best served sticking with your starter sigil until you get Awareness.

I can't think of a scenario as a DK where you would gem for expertise rather than str. Strength is your primary source of AP, which boosts both your physical AND spell dmg, unlike expertise; it scales with all stat buffs like MotW & BoK; and it also adds to your parry rating which is not a real concern for dps, but hey it's free. One could argue with gemming for hit if you are not capped, but for red gems and stat weights in general, Str > ArP > Exp.

Get your gauntlets, and stick two +16Str gems in them.. in fact apart from your two purples for the meta bonus, replace all your yellow gems with +Str. The minor socket bonuses you are getting don't make up for the Str you're missing out on.

Edit: I missed the blindingly obvious point that Dark Rider's bonus dmg is effectively 100% proc per hit. The end result is the same: since both sigils also affect the same attacks, with or without the haste buff, Haunted Dreams is an inferior choice for Blood, as Dark Rider already covers your primary damage dealing attack.

It's actually rather easy to think of a scenario as a DK where one would gem for expertise rather than STR. With low level gear and in 10 man runs the DK is likely the only source of the AP buff via abomination's might and expertise directly improves the uptime of the buff all the way up to the cap.

Well i fully understand this, hence the rotation and mechanics of sudden doom. I was wondering also about why the tool tip reads so oddly for DS.

These are the numbers i was looking for, thanks!

Great, just right after i lvled JC for them gems, for shame blizzard.

Well I have to admit I didn't consider the above scenario and it seems reasonable, however, I still don't believe it holds. AM has a 10 sec duration, which is good for half of a blood rotation. That's 1 DS and 2-4 HS hits. If you are really concerned with getting AM up, you open with DS; if you are hit capped and have only the 6 exp from VoTW, you have a 5% chance of being dodged on a boss. A dodged DS uses no runes, so effectively you lose a 1.5s GCD and try DS again. Your chances of being dodged on 2 DS attempts is 0.25%. Given the sheer number of strikes made in a blood rotation, it's unlikely you'll have much issue with keeping AM up.

Keep in mind the AP from strength contributes dmg at a 15% coef to Death Coil, 10% to IT, and about 5% to all disease ticks. None of these core talents are dodgeable so they don't get anything from expertise. Even running 10-man raids without a hunter, enhance shammie, or other blood dk, I wouldn't recommend gemming exp over strength to gain a couple seconds uptime on the AM buff.

Why? If strength is a better stat than expertise pre-cap, then 8str/12stam is better than 8exp/12stam, just like 16str is better than 16exp. The change in prismatics should have no effect on whether or not you socket expertise.

I know that "theoretically" strength is better than expertise, but I always want to stay capped. I personally do not care about theory in regards to hit/expertise capping. When an attack misses or is dodged, it is ZERO dps.

To clarify more, I am saying that if a single 8exp/12stam gem would put me at the cap while giving me the appropriate bonus, I would do it.