So now that the t7 has been officially switched to 5RP per swing, I think I'm going to drop glyph of dark death for unholy blight. Anyone else see this glyph being useful?

i was doing a little napkin math and dark death still seems slightly better after the the 4pt7 nerf. Margin is pretty small though, hopefully someone with more accurate spreadsheets can get a more definite answer with figures.

on an unrelated note, has anyone who has changed to 4pt8 (not 8.5) found it to be an upgrade over 4pt7.5 ? My rough calculations seem to show it is a marginally better upgrade but i hope someone has a gd spreadsheet has, again, a more definite answer.

I've been hammering the dummy this morning using both my 4 piece T7.5 and my 4 piece T8 (2x T8 & 2x T8.5) and am getting almost identical results DPS wise.

I know the dummy says little about actual performance but considering pre-nerf there was a 300dps difference, I think it speaks volumes.

A possible side effect, I havent seen mentioned yet, from the t7 bonus nerf is that 12-59 speccs are now showing as 40 dps above 10-61 on the simulator(just from changing 4xt7 to 2xt7 and 2xt8, remaining stats unchanged). The UB glyph appears to be a 6 dps increase over the dark death one, as well.

Less RP meaning less DCs meaning black ice loses power, maybe?

Ok, maybe for 2xt7 + 2xt8 but what about 4xt7 vs 4xt8? I'm pretty sure t8 wins, then. At least, i remember Methods saying so. And the OP was modified according to this conclusion.

Well, that's a bit too simplistic and not very convincing, i'm sorry. Black Ice also affects Scourge Strike, and SS damage gets boosted by the 4xT8 bonus... There are contradictory factors, so unless you really calculate the whole thing, i dont think you should jump to early conclusions.

Your comments make little sense, I wasnt talking about 4xt8, just presenting the results that a quick simulator run put out, for me, indicating that 12-59 might be slightly benefited by the recent t7 bonus nerf, in comparison to 10-61. Where you read anything more than this is beyond me.

Back to actual theorycrafting, im getting around 5 more dps by swapping out the glyph of scourge strike, which is interesting and seems to support Origin´s math here: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t50274-k...8/#post1245555

edit: this is with 2xt7 and 2xt8, and replacing SS glyph with UB one, thus using UB, DD, and ghoul glyphs-

My spreadsheets and Kahorie's simulator are showing similar trends in regards to 12/0/59 and 0/10/61 (I'll double check this later since I am going by memory). It seems that in BiS gear for either spec you will need to have all armor buffs (MotW, Devo, etc) to see 12/0/59 pull ahead but it does in fact lead with the right conditions. 0/10/61 is still slightly superior for AoE if you can live through it.

Edit: For clarity's sake, I am talking about performance after the T7 nerf. With T8 4P it has always been a close call anyway so no new surprise here. I was not commenting on the SS Glyph as I've never been confident enough to speak strongly about it's true value. In a theory standpoint it's more of an alternative than an improvement from my perspective.

As for OB being used in an Unholy heavy build, I haven't found a solid setup to support that. I think when comparing raw damage dealt by SS to OB there are possibly clear advantages to each one but the split in focus, gear-wise, doesn't seem worth the trouble. The more you itemize for OB the less benefit you get from other major abilities like our disease for example or even pets and (to a lesser extent) UB/DC. Every point used on ArP is not used for Haste or Crit (or even hit/exp). Granted, we don't have much of a choice sometimes. I think we will run into serious scaling issues (item vs ability) if we try to ignore the primary focus of our tree (shadow damage).

Maybe replace SS glyph with IT glyph? Without glyphed SS we'll definately use more IT. Or is the RP from IT less then what's saved with UB glyph?

UB glyph saves you one UB per minute which equals one more DC. You use IT three times per minute, which equals 30 RP gained from the glyph, which is only three quarter of a DC.

I'm not crunching any numbers but just because I've done it a hundred times; when you set your UB off to max out for a coming bloodlust'd gargoyle, regaining that 40RP isn't as easy. Wouldn't the extra 10 seconds give yourself a little buff room in your cycles? Like I said, I don't have actual numbers but rotiation-wise it seems to be easier. Rather than a little extra DC damage in a tighter rotation.

What exactly do you mean here? Personally I just use gargoyle whenever I need to. It doesn't put much of a kink in keeping UB up at all, and I can still fire off DCs. This is of course with old T7 4p bonus, but I still don't quite get what situation you are talking about here.

Gargoyle isn't DRW. You only need 50 to start it and it wont effect the duration in the slightest unless you fail to stay > 0 RP for the full 30 seconds. Basic game mechanics, really.

Oh really? Well I never knew that. Sometimes it doesn't show the icon for gargoyle so I never knew when or what's affecting it.

So once Gargoyle is out, I just need to not let RP hit zero? As in, I can use RP abilities? I always think it bugs out and goes away if I go below a percentage. Good to know.

Wait a minute? there is absolutely no advantage to start the Gargoyle at 100 RP?

I always thought there was one... or maybe it was removed in 3.1?

Because the tooltip on wowhead still says:

A Gargoyle flies into the area and bombards the target with Nature damage modified by the Death Knight's attack power. Persists for 10 sec plus 1 sec per 3 runic power up to 40 sec.

So technically this means 10 secs at 0, then for the extra 30 seconds, you need 90 runic power. So i guess it's runic power over time and not "at the start".

If that is the case, I think I find one major flaw in my game lol.

As far as I'm aware the Gargoyle will currently last no longer than 30 seconds, and that there is a tooltip error. I could be mistaken though.

The gargoyle takes 50 RP to start up, then after 10 seconds it drains 3 RP per second up to its maximum duration. You don't need anything greater than 50 RP when you press the button to get the maximum duration, just don't go to 0 while you have the gargoyle buff.

I have some rotation problem here.

I am geared with 4xT7.5 and use the following rotation:

PS, IT, SS, BS, BS, UB, DC
SS, SS, SS, DC, DC
SS, SS, BS, BS, DC, DC
repeat.

I use the UB Glyph. With it, I can use 5x DC in this rotation. Without the glyph I can only use 4x DC while casting UB one more time.

I like the rotation a lot. Now here is my problem:

The new T8 set bonus doesn't give extra RP and without the 4xT7 bonus RP, this rotation no longer works. I'm missing RP for a second DC at some points of the rotation. Anyone else having this problem?

The T8 stats are so much better then the T7 stats, but I get less DPS with T8 just because of this damn missing RP bonus. Is there some viable rotation I can use with T8 without screwing up my dps?

My spec is 12 / 0 / 59

Don't forget to use Horn of Winter on every cd and also fill up RP with AMS.

The abstract calculations for this are surprisingly easy as you don't have to account for any multipliers, since the only thing Glyph of Dark Death and Glyph of Unholy Blight do, is increase your DC damage.
The only problem is there are some issues to think of besides that, but ill discuss that in the last section.

Glyph of unholy blight gives you 1 extra DC every minute. Thats pretty easy to calculate, as you switch from 1 UB every 20 seconds ( = 3 UB per minute) to 1 UB every 30 seconds ( = 2 UB per minute) which frees up 40 RP which equals 1 DC.

Glyph of Dark Death is slightly harder, but still fairly easy.
First thing to realise that with 5 RP bonus on SS (with 4xT7) it doesn't matter whether you proc glyph of SS or not since 1 PS + 1 IT equals 25 RP, and so does 1 SS.

That means that per rotation you generate: 5x SS + 2x BS = 5x 25 + 2x 10 = 145 RP per rotation = 435 RP per minute.

In that minute you use 3 unholy blights which comes down to 120 RP. Which leaves 315 RP for death coils.

315 / 40 = 7.875. Worst case's sake, and keeping in mind you also have gargoyle every 3 minutes, and you overcap on RP sometimes. I think its good to assume 7 deathcoils here.

7 Death coils per minute, which all get 15% extra damage means you do a total of: 7 * 15% = 105% extra deathcoil damage.

This means that Glyph of Dark Death is in this case better than glyph of unholy blight, even with only 5 RP extra. Once you lose the T7 bonus you lose 5 RP * 5 SS * 3 rotation = 75 RP / minute. Meaning you drop down to only 6 or even 5 Death coils per minute, which means Dark Death loses its edge.

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There is an extra layer of variables that makes this difficult though, for example:

- Gargoyle has an impact on the power of glyph of dark death, gargoyle costs about 110 RP (50 initial + 3*20 Rp over time) every 3 minutes which equal about 37 RP every minute. Meaning less death coils.

- Range can often prohibit you from using Unholy Blight all the time, making Glyph of UB a lot worse.

- In some cases using Glyph of UB can actually be bad, as certain bosses don't allow you to be in melee for 30 seconds, whereas 20 seconds is often a lot more flexible to apply.

- Glyph of Unholy Blight frees up a GCD. It's unlikely that a spec as unholy needs this, but its a factor you can not discard. An extra GCD can often be used for something useful,

- etc

One would be safe to assume that the math will change with these variables in encounters. What I want to figure out is will the change in actual fights make UB more useful? In a battle where you may not always be within 10 yards of the boss, how long would one have to stand next to said target for the UB glyph to be more effective? Factoring in the 2 set bonus from Tier 8 would also benefit glyph of dark death, but is it enough to beat 1 more DC, assuming UB can't always hit the target?

I think my biggest question is which glyph gives the better benefit against the most amount of bosses in Ulduar, simulations and test dummies aside?
I'm still new to theorycrafting, so don't hit me if I said something stupid.

I currently have a 4 piece Tier 7.5 bonus set, but I also have [Dragonsteel Faceplate] [Chestplate of Titanic Fury] and [Clockwork Legplates] on the side. At what point is it worth breaking the T7 bonus set? Is it worth breaking the 4 piece bonus but keeping the 2 piece bonus? or replacing all three items?

Just looking at Disease glyph for a moment:

Assume the standard SS, SS, BS, BS then SS, SS, SS rotation(excluding RP Dumps)


using rounded numbers you have a 76% chance to proc SS glyph per 20 seconds of rotation, so 44% of the time(time being a minute) you can rely on SS glyph alone to keep your diseases up. 56% of the time you have to cast at least one PS, IT to refresh diseases at a cost of a SS.

It would appear that if 56% of a SS was greater than a bloodstrike then disease would be the obvious choice. Looking at any number of parses you can see that this is the case. While this analysis suffers from fights where you are off the boss long enough to allow your diseases to fall off it also doesn't account for the times where you cast pestilence regardless of glyphs. (Razor if you bring adds to the boss, XT if you bring Pummelers to one side of the boss, Thorim arena, Cat Lady for defender add, Hodir for flash freeze adds, all phases of Freya except final, phase 3 and 4 of mimiron. - I've not done Yogg but it appears some phases of Yogg as well.)

I've been using SS glyph since WotlK but im wondering if anyone can rebut my statement. Otherwise I plan on making the switch.



edit** I've used really a best case scenario for the SS glyph. Often if you get the proc on the first SS of a rotation you end up using PS,IT anyway or risk your diseases falling off. There are also many bosses where you use blood boil and don't achieve the 5 SS rotation due to lack of death runes, disease glyph suffers from neither of these shortcomings.