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.
Your calculations aren't totally right.
When Glyph of SS doesn't proc you don't lose 100% of the SS damage. What you lose is ( SS dmg - ( PS dmg + IT dmg)).
So using your 56%, which sounds about right, you get a slightly different situation.
Because glyph of diseases doesn't get better when:
( SS dmg * 0.56 ) > BS
But when:
( ( SS dmg - (PS dmg + IT dmg) ) * 0.56 ) > BS
Which changes stuff a bit around.
Using some random numbers that last i remember were fairly close:
SS dmg: 5000
PS dmg: 2000
IT dmg: 1500
BS dmg: 2000
In your math you were right. 5000 * 0.56 = 2800 -> 2800 > 2000
With the right math its:
( ( 5000 - ( 2000 + 1500 ) ) * 0.56 ) = 840
840 < 2000
Numbers might be way off, but the impact is fairly obvious. If you use a Pestilence you do no damage whatsoever, you lose 100% of that Blood Strike. If your SS glyph won't proc you do not lose 100% of SS, because you gain the damage from an IT and PS in return.
There are a lot of other stuff to consider of course, like you said there are a lot of fights where you will use PT anyway, so glyph of diseases is useful there, especially in AoE situations. However there are also situations where you DON'T want to use PT, and in those cases glyph of diseases becomes quite useless. There aren't many boss fights, but a lot of trash in ulduar is being killed by using CC. You can't use PT there.
With the buff to PS there is even the question whether or not we need either of the glyphs in the first place. You'd gain only minimal benefit as the loss of trading a SS for a PS+IT lessens.
Foxx's math is solid, and I think this argument has been discussed before. Given our choices, SS glyph seems to win out every time by just a bit. If nothing else aside from the minor damage increase over PS glyph or glyph of diseases, SS seems to simplify our rotation, which is always nice .
Even the GCD between using PS+IT pushes our rotation back by at least a second, which we will end up waiting for on our next SS with those runes. Using the "standard 20 second rotation" posted by zenos, we have 5 scourge strikes in a 20 second period. Now given 20% chance to proc the glyph (5*.2) we have 1 proc per 20 seconds, in an ideal situation. This saves roughly (unless you're REALLY unlucky) 3 seconds per minute which you could normally be using on an ability, instead of waiting for a rune to refresh.
If you time it properly with the hidden 1.5 second rune reduction and junk it makes up for it, but that's seriously not always achievable.
Anyways, in my opinion, at the very least glyph of SS makes our lives easier, so why mess with a good thing.
There's a practical implication I just learned by testing. A perfect rotation on a target dummy over time falls into what I listed above and gives you a one second window to refresh diseases with PT. While I wasn't GCD limited, there are times when using a GCD would cause a collision with the blood refresh, a collision that often ends with loosing blood plague and keeping the other two diseases.
I'm either lacking the imagination to derive a rotation that doesn't fall into this problem or else I need to recant my post from above.
So I have been noticing the Gargoyle doing extremely subpar dps on XT heart phase (around 500-ish mostly) in most parses I have seen, including my own.
The abnormal hitbox of the heart seems to be causing it to melee a lot (often more than casting).
As such, it seems like a dps loss to spend the RP on gargoyle on the heart phase at least, over casting DCs.
This really underwhelms Unholy burst on the one fight where burst is really inflated.
Has anyone been able to make proper use of the Gargoyle on the heart?
I have been thinking about the discussion on the previous page about substituting the UB glyph in for the SS glyph, making your glyph set UB, Ghoul, and DD. It looks interesting at any rate, but I have a question about it. If you substitute this glyph in, with a normal 12/0/59 build, could you then possibly pull one point out of Epidemic (to 1/2) for use in another talent?
The thought being, that with you manually refreshing the diseases via PS+IT every 20 secs, the 21 sec duration may not be as optimal, with you overwriting that last tick of your diseases. The question on this is whether that last point in Epidemic is worth more than possibly fleshing out another talent like Necrosis or whatnot, since it's worth roughly 0.8% per point from recounts I've studied. What do you guys think?
Your Gargoyle actually casts on XT's heart? Lucky you.
It's really dumb. It can't attack Kologarn, it can't attack the heart, hell I'm pretty sure it's screwy on Yogg Saron's brain too. Not to mention stuff like Flame Jets/Ground Tremor messing with it. If it weren't for smart heals and JoL it would die to a lot of raid damage/void zone material, but that happens a lot less often compared to how it was when it spawned with the base 4-5k health.
I am looking for the math on why Bandit's Insignia is better than Fury of the Five Flights. I have both and notice much higher DPS with Fury than with Bandit's. If anyone could explain or point me to the explanation I would much appreciate it. Thank you in advance.
Under ideal conditions the Fury trinket is better.
However it is not that easy to maintain the full 20 stacks in order to get the full benefit of the AP bonus, at least compared to let's say dual-wielding classes. 190ap + the proc (which can crit upwards of 4k damage) is considered to be better simply because it is there all the time. At least that's what I gathered from the discussion about the trinkets so far in the older thread.
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.
I have simulated [to check the math] and calculated usefulness of SS glyph. Result is that if you use PS>IT when diseases will fall off and SS didn't refresh them you'll have to do so in 81/781 [about 10.37%] of events. In other words, with SS glyph, PS>IT will be used every tenth time instead of SS on average. In standard rotation you use it every fifth time. So, more or less, when you'll want to calculate how good SS glyph is, just take it as it replaces PS>IT every second rotation.
81/781 is exact number, properly calculated and could probably be added to OP or to FAQ.
After we get rid of t7, it will produce less RP than PS>IT and their respective damage will be much narrower, then I'll possibly switch to UB glyph.
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?
Well as Unholy I would never have taken those items unless no one else wanted them, and even then it'd be debatable. If I were you I'd either re-spec Blood so that the gear is actually useful for you, or just not bother and keep your Tier 7 stuff until you get some gear that is more suited to an Unholy spec.
There's a big thread devoted to gear for all three specs and you only need to look at the Unholy stat weights or read some discussion in this thread to see that ArPen is fairly crap for Unholy.
I have simulated [to check the math] and calculated usefulness of SS glyph. Result is that if you use PS>IT when diseases will fall off and SS didn't refresh them you'll have to do so in 81/781 [about 10.37%] of events. In other words, with SS glyph, PS>IT will be used every tenth time instead of SS on average. In standard rotation you use it every fifth time. So, more or less, when you'll want to calculate how good SS glyph is, just take it as it replaces PS>IT every second rotation.
81/781 is exact number, properly calculated and could probably be added to OP or to FAQ.
After we get rid of t7, it will produce less RP than PS>IT and their respective damage will be much narrower, then I'll possibly switch to UB glyph.
I'm curious how you determine 10.37% "of events", it seems nebulous. the remainder of 75% of 75% 5 times per 20 second rotation 3 times was my basic calculation. Could you expand on how you calculate 10.37% and to what it refers?
edit** - I understand the 10.37%, I'm just struggling to understand how my simple model varies so much versus your simulation. It should be much nearer.
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've done some tests last night on Freya and unless I missed something, the total of runic power you have when you start your gargoyle IS important.
From what I have experienced, it worked the way I was expecting, I might be wrong but I didn't go on a dummy to check.
Starting a gargoyle at just enough RP to enable the button seemed to put 18s on the debuff, while starting it at full was going for a lot more.
Then you have to keep some RP or if you drop to 0 your gargoyle will fly away.
So starting the gargoyle at anything else than full runic power is a waste of dps.
Can anyone confirm this? I always assumed it was working that way until I read a few messages here 2 days ago that made me doubt, but tests seems to proove I'm right.. or maybe I missed something.
I've done some tests last night on Freya and unless I missed something, the total of runic power you have when you start your gargoyle IS important.
From what I have experienced, it worked the way I was expecting, I might be wrong but I didn't go on a dummy to check.
Starting a gargoyle at just enough RP to enable the button seemed to put 18s on the debuff, while starting it at full was going for a lot more.
Then you have to keep some RP or if you drop to 0 your gargoyle will fly away.
So starting the gargoyle at anything else than full runic power is a waste of dps.
Can anyone confirm this? I always assumed it was working that way until I read a few messages here 2 days ago that made me doubt, but tests seems to proove I'm right.. or maybe I missed something.
Your gargoyle buff shows up 10 seconds after casting. it should be a total duration of ~30 seconds including the 10 second no RP drain period. I've been seeing this behaviour consistently and I rarely am much above 50 RP. 10+18 is almost 30 so you may not be accounting for the 10 seconds no RP period. Regardless, Gargoyle has nothing to do with your total RP.
It's confusing because it did show 18 seconds when I started it around 60 EP and 28 when I started it at full RP.
I used to be blood, so I was expecting it to work like DRW, and I thought i found a flaw in my game. I'll spend times on the dummy to make sure of this.
It makes sense what you are saying.. I'm just confused by the damned tooltip and the debuffs I've seen, and obviously, tooltip is not the best in the world to understand.
It's confusing because it did show 18 seconds when I started it around 60 EP and 28 when I started it at full RP.
I used to be blood, so I was expecting it to work like DRW, and I thought i found a flaw in my game. I'll spend times on the dummy to make sure of this.
It makes sense what you are saying.. I'm just confused by the damned tooltip and the debuffs I've seen, and obviously, tooltip is not the best in the world to understand.
Yes, it is a very confusing ability. I was actually the other way around, switching from unholy to blood during naxx. I didn't realize that DRW required you to have all the RP at once, which I found difficult to do.
I can confirm that garg drains your RP continuously, starting after 10 seconds. I'm guessing they did this to allow you to use it when you have just over 50 RP and not have to worry about running out of RP and losing it immediately after if you miss an attack or something. The tooltip does not explain this behavior, but it is easy to reproduce on a dummy.
I'm curious how you determine 10.37% "of events", it seems nebulous. the remainder of 75% of 75% 5 times per 20 second rotation 3 times was my basic calculation. Could you expand on how you calculate 10.37% and to what it refers?
edit** - I understand the 10.37%, I'm just struggling to understand how my simple model varies so much versus your simulation. It should be much nearer.
Simulation actually showed 10.35% . This is exact number.
It's because you cannot really look "best case" scenarios in this type of problems.
You also didn't consider what happens if some middle SS refreshes the disesases [it restarts cycle again].
Relentless Earthsiege will become a viable alternative to the Chaotic Skyflare now, paired with a fierce monarch topaz (8str/8haste) rather than a second sovereign opal. I suppose it'll depend on whether you can get the most socket bonus strength with 2 purple or 1 purple, 1 orange.
I'm curious how you determine 10.37% "of events", it seems nebulous. the remainder of 75% of 75% 5 times per 20 second rotation 3 times was my basic calculation. Could you expand on how you calculate 10.37% and to what it refers?
edit** - I understand the 10.37%, I'm just struggling to understand how my simple model varies so much versus your simulation. It should be much nearer.
Looking at his numbers, he models the SS glyph as 4 consecutive non-procs resulting in IT+PS replacing the next SS, which is not necessarily the optimum strategy in all situations (depending on your latency and where you are on your rune cooldowns, you may be better off waiting for a 5th consecutive non-proc before you replace your next SS with IT+PS).
There are a number of ways to calculate the odds. For the sake of transparency, I'll briefly describe the first-year algebra method:
Assume x is the average number of SS to get 4 consecutive non-procs and a is the chance to get a non-proc (a is 0.75 in this case).
Quick explanation:
If the first SS is a proc, then the first SS is wasted for the purpose of getting 4 consecutive non-procs and you restart from scratch trying to get 4 consecutive non-procs, needing, on average, x additional SS to get 4 consecutive non-procs for a total of 1+x SS. You multiply the average number of SS needed for this contingency to get 4 consecutive non-procs (1+x) by the chance for this contingency to happen (0.25).
Same principle as the previous term, except the 2nd SS is a proc (and 1st SS is a non-proc), so the first 2 SS are wasted for the purpose of getting 4 consecutive non-procs. Again, you multiply the average number of SS needed for this contingency to get 4 consecutive non-procs (2+x) by the chance for this contingency to happen (0.25 x 0.75).
This term accounts for 1st and 2nd SS being non-procs and 3rd SS being a proc.
I will refrain from insulting your intelligence here.
This term accounts for the contingency of getting 4 consecutive non-procs in 4 tries (naturally, the average number of SS needed for this contingency to get 4 consecutive non-procs is 4).
Solving for x, you get x = 700 / 81. So, on average, every 81 in 700 SS is a 4th consecutive non-proc that results in the next "SS or IT+PS pair" instance being an IT+PS pair. Therefore, 81 in every 781 "SS or IT+PS pair" instances are IT+PS pairs when employing the "replace next SS with IT+PS after 4 consecutive SS non-procs" strategy with the SS glyph.
Applying this method to 5 consecutive misses, you get an expectation value of x = 3124 / 243. The exact worth of the SS glyph is somewhere between the 4 and 5 values depending on the particulars of your replacement strategy. The exact math for an in-between strategy can be considerably messier and is beyond the scope of this post.
Relentless Earthsiege will become a viable alternative to the Chaotic Skyflare now, paired with a fierce monarch topaz (8str/8haste) rather than a second sovereign opal. I suppose it'll depend on whether you can get the most socket bonus strength with 2 purple or 1 purple, 1 orange.
It's a narrow margin, but yes, Relentless Earthsiege Diamond does appear superior when the +8 haste is taken into account. Both in Naxxgear and T8+BiS.
It'll come down to which gem (the purple or orange) provides the better socketbonuses.
Is there any valid discussion about Bone Shield(1/1)[BoS] vs. Bladed Armor(1/5)[BA] ?
raidbuffed BA provides ~100ap, 20% more AP benefit from abilities etc. (e.g. it is 1.56(1.3*1.2) more dmg on UB ),
is active 100% of combat while BoS "just" provides 2% more dmg on all attacks...
and has not always a 100% uptime (depends on the boss really),
with ~200UB-dmg per tick(without BA) it is 204dmg with BoS active,
200 without ... so 201.56dmg - for 100% uptime,
now an approx. uptime of BoS (of 75%) the overall dmg reduce to 200+(4*0.75),
203, 50% uptime -> 202 (nearly the same) ... so more aoe - BA becomes superior to BoS in AE-Fights?
Any DK who takes 1 point in BA over Bone Shield should be shot.
[edit] Just to explain that, when BoS is up, it is strictly superior to BA. When BoS is not up, that means that you have been hit repeatedly by things designed to kill you in an interval too quick for your BoS CD to have passed, so the reason you are still alive is a) BoS or b) your competent healers, who will be very thankful that you took less damage than any other damage dealing class currently in the game. The single exception to this might be the little adds on Freya, but then again Freya is one encounter where Bone Shield is immensly helpful. That's why any DK who takes 1 point in BA over BoS should be shot. It's like comparing the Premier League of talents with middle school soccer or something like that.
I am working with this spec 17/0/54. I did a lots of testing on dummies (I know dummies are not the best measure). After lots of test i found this spec was the best for me.
I did tests with/out necrosis, unholy and blood presence and couple of specs (usuals 0/10/61 or 12/0/59). Tbh after millions of damage all specs was close to a 3-3.1k dps but 17/0/54 did 3.300+ in every try.
I think Necrosis doesn't deserve those 5 points due it basically is 20% of your white damage (auto attacks) then i believe dark conviction (5% crit with all your abilities, spells and hits) works much better.
Raiding Ulduar25 my damage is very nice as,
8k on XT, 11k+hodirHM, 5.5k in vezax (also doing silences) with t8/t8.5 gear and ulduar10 weapon.
6k+ on patchwerk nax 25 with t7.5 gear and keltu10 weapon.
Do you think i should test 0/10/61 or 12/0/59 in raid?
05/21/09, 3:30 PM
. 
. This is exact number.
