Actually, I just read the last 11 pages and it turns out that it was never definitively decided whether to switch out the SS glyph for the DC or UB glyph or to keep the SS glyph and use UB/Ghoul/SS. Those seemed to be the three topics discussed but nothing conclusive was found.

Be that as it may, I'd like to start it again and see if we can't reach valid conclusion. From what's been discussed earlier:

Glyph of Scourge Strike-

Pros:

-Chance to allow for another Scourge Strike thereby saving a GCD for a potentially forced IT+PS
-Causes a bit more damage than an IT+PS

Cons:

-Clips diseases
-Generates 5 less RP than a IT+PS

Glyph of Unholy Blight

Pros:

-Frees 40 RP per minute
-Frees 1 GCD per minute

Cons:

-Freed GCD can be wasted in an already free-GCD-heavy spec

Glyph of Dark Death

Pros:

-Increases the damage of a commonly-used technique by a significant amount

Cons:

-Highly dependent on RP generation

This list may seem biased and if so please feel free to add to it. This is simply a compilation of the ideas behind the glyphs discounting number discussions (which came up to be inconclusive for the most part).

I know I'm not capped now, but I was over both caps until recently. I'll have to look into the blood tap stuff posted later. I have been using blood tap on cooldown to GF, but I feel like it happens more often than every minute.

Also death runes haven't gone away on a miss for a while now. Since I went below hitcap I have missed SS a few times on death runes and haven't lost them.

Another downside to Glyph of Scourge Strike is that Wandering Plague has a 1 second hidden cooldown. With both diseases ticking simultaneously, you'll lose a solid chunk of Wandering Plague ticks. Napkin math:

If you have 40% crit rate, 50 Blood Plague ticks, and 50 Frost Fever ticks, you'll have on average 40 Wandering Plague ticks not counting the internal cooldown.

The chance of a double crit with both diseases is .4 * .4, or .16. Those 16 double crits become single crits, meaning 8 Wandering Plague ticks are lost, 20% of Wandering Plague damage.

In order to get the actual amount of Wandering Plague ticks lost you have to factor in the amount of time that the diseases actually spend "lined up" with each other as a result of the Glyph, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

And I just thought I'd add that Kahorie's DK Simulator has consistently placed Glyph of Dark Death and UB above SS for me. SS is often near a 0 DPS gain, and in a few rare scenarios it's actually been a slight loss.

So

Back to glyphed Scourge Strike vs. IT+PS.

Data I posted earlier was for 12/0/59 with mostly naxx gear and 4t7 with glyphs SS, DD, ghoul.

Using values from Invisus' wws parse, average values are: (Kologarn encounter)
SS=6455
IT=1552
PS=2121
ff tick=847
bp tick=846
DC=4025

IT + PS + disease ticks + 1/8*DC = 5869 damage

This falls short by 586 damage compared to SS. The best case for SS glyph is if it procs once during 20 seconds (two rune cycles). In this case SS glyph is worth 586/20=29dps.
In same 20 seconds UB glyph is worth 13.33RP or 13.33/40*DC=1341 damage =>67dps

If SS glyph procs more than once in 20 seconds, then it clips diseases again (and again) and is more clearly dps loss. If anythings wrong with this simple calculations please correct me.
What Orannis wrote about lost Wandering plague damage also weights agains SS glyph.

This is completely oversimplified, and may lead to false conclusions in my opinion.

A Scourge Strike Glyph Proc does not make you lose one tick of each disease, it delays one tick of each disease. The average delay was calculated by Orlgin in a discussion we had via PMs, it is 1.75 seconds.

847+846 = 1690
1690/3 = 563

Disease ticks are 563 dps. If you lose 1.75 seconds of that, you lose 1.75*563 = 988 damage every time the Glyph procs.

What you gain when the glyph procs though, is in my opinion a lot harder to calculate than just : SS - (IT+PS+1/8DC).

A proc does not replace IT+PS with SS, it delays the time when you will have to stop SSing and do IT+PS. By how much? It's something I can't figure out myself. And even if I could, figuring out the DPS gained by this would be even harder.

Another thing to take into account is the fact that if SS glyph doesn't proc in time, you won't let your diseases wear off in order to not lose Ebon Plague, and the impact of diseases with talents such as BcB, Rage of Rivendare. This means you will do exactly what SS glyph does when it procs : you will "eat" the diseases and delay one tick of each.

Orlgin also pointed out that simulations were probably not reliable to establish the clear winning glyphs because if SS glyph doesn't proc in time, the simulator will probably refresh diseases after they wore off, which means (due to latency, and possibly runes being on cooldown) that there's a little period of time in which you are DPSing with no diseases on your target, hence losing damage from BCB, Rage of Rivendare, and the first PS not being buffed either.

Also the simulator probably tries to SS later (ie. closer to the ending of the diseases) than a human would, and if the glyph procs then, the glyph may appear stronger than it is.


TLDR : I'm not saying your conclusions are false, but the way you reached them is obviously over simplified, which in my eyes invalidates them.

The reasons behind what made Glyph of Scourge Strike awesome are pretty much gone. Plague Strike does a respectable amount of damage since 3.1, and even with the current T7 4pc you get equal RP gains from IT+PS as you do with an SS, not to mention you get less from SS with T8.

With Kahorie's sim I actually see a roughly 50 DPS loss from glyphing SS compared to no glyph in it's place with a T8 setup. Pretty stupid, although not necessarily accurate.

It's worth some real raid testing, but I think it's valid that Ghoul/UB/DD is potentially better. Maybe some consideration for Glyph of IT (target swapping, using an extra IT with Bone Shield/Ghoul Frenzy?...though I still don't use GF)

Often ignored in the math of best possible DPS is that perfect player skill is assumed.

I'm going to be dropping my SS glyph in order to have a pretty much 100% duplicable rotation and knowing when my diseases will be on and not relying on RNG to help me out while also sacrificing disease tick time (not actual ticks as previously clarified).

For me, UB/DD/Ghoul and a repeatable rotation every time > Ghoul/SS/either UB or DD and having to watch disease timers to know if you have to refresh as well as losing some disease time.

Some of the math behind this decision is in simulators and could be pulled out and shown in this thread, but since my post is as much about the devaluation of player skill in the equation (since it is admittedly non-quatifiable) as it is about the mechanics of the SS glyph and its relative value, I'll let a better math player show the math if they're so inclined.

I've also switched to the Ghoul/UB/DD glyph combination and my rotation has, of course, become more reliable and predictable. However, it has become noticeably tighter; my runes began to clip due to the lack of Expertise (I am Hit capped). Although this was possible prior to the switch due to an immense reliability on chance but an abundance of GCDs, one would think Expertise/Hit cap becomes increasingly important so as to avoid the heightened chance of error that this tighter rotation poses. I'm not sure if and how this would affect the stat weight of Hit/Expertise (I'm fairly sure it doesn't) but it does increase the practical value which may or may not matter in this math game.

From my experience you can gain an extra SS over IT+PS once a minut. Which would make the glyph gain:
SS - (PS + IT + 1/8DC) /60s, to use OP link numbers: 8655 - (3525 + 2277 + 623) /60s = 37.17 dps*.
UB glyph free's up 40 rp a minut which can be used as an extra DC: 4984 /60s = 83.07 dps.
So UB > SS glyph for an easier rotation with better dps.
*Orannis made a comment a few post earlier that glyphs like SS and pest would cause loss in Wandering Plague damage, making it even less effective.

Math for 1 extra SS every 3x20s rotation:
SS1->BS->BS->SS2 SS3->SS4->SS5
SS will be PS + IT at some point, meaning in 1 rotation the following 4 SS need to proc the glyph or you have to start over.
0.75^4 = 32% no proc on the PS+IT rotation -> every 3rd start you get no proc (94%)
// You can't use a 5th SS here as the PS will falloff when the IT rune becomes available "2x10s VS 2x10s + 1gcd"
0.75^5 = 24% no proc on a 5x SS rotation -> every 4th extra SS you have to start new (96%)
// You can use a 5th SS here as 2x10s falls under the 21s talented duration.
Will visualize the math now in code, each vertical line being a possible SS, 5 being a 20s rotation. X = PS+IT, - = SS.
*96% isn't 100% so you will gain slightly more dps.
Most important thing to notice is that every 1 extra SS means a new window of 5 chained SS which apply to the 24% no proc chance. Now would we round the numbers slightly we could come to the following conclusion:
A = 0.75^4 = 0.31640625 = ~1/3 of the time the glyph won't proc in a 4xSS window after PS+IT
B = 0.75^5 = 0.23730469 = ~1/4 of the time the glyph won't proc in a 5xSS window
On average this means roughly 4 extra SS on 2/3 PS+IT+SSx4 rotation.
C = ~(2/3)*4

C/5 + 1 = ~23/15 rotations
//there are 5 unholy and frost runes in a 20s rotation
1/(23/15) = ~15/23 need PS+IT
-> ~8/23 or ~1/3 or ~33% of the rotations can skip PS+IT in favor of SS.

Exact math:
1-A = % of the time the glyph will proc in a 4xSS window after PS+IT
1/B = the average extra SS you can do before having to PS+IT
C = (1-A)*(1/B) = amount of extra SS on PS+IT+SSx4 rotation with SS glyph
1/(C/5 + 1) = amount of rotations that need PS+IT = 63.4464754%

It's late here in europe hope I didn't screw up my 1st time math on these boards too much Hope atleast it will help decide on which glyph to use till next patch.

How does the 4 piece tier 8 bonus affect the SS glyph or not debate?

(maybe it was allready mentioned and I missed it)

I will have to do some testing to see if the 4pcT8 bonus increases SS damage enough to make SS glyph procs more desirable than IT+PS to avoid clipping diseases. I'm pretty terribad at math so I'll spare all of you the attempted calculations and just test it out

For clarity's sake it should be mentioned that all this Glyph switching is (for now) in the context of switching from T7 to T8. And that when you make that transition, you're replacing the DD Glyph with the UB Glyph.

I think the main focus of the testing now should be to see if the DD Glyph is better than the SS Glyph.

The reason (I think) why it wasn't a good idea to take the UB Glyph before is that 4P T7 used to give you such a ridiculously high amount of RP that you would be completely unable to use the RP you gained from the UB Glyph. In T8 (and now probably nerfed T7) it is much easier to take advantage of the added RP, so it becomes useful again.

On the topic of UB vs. SS glyph

There's a lot of math and Sims numbers put forward so I decided to test the UB glyph and see the results for myself
Here's what i found out
On fights where you are guaranteed no movement, no breaks in rotation (think Patches) UB will outperform slightly and I do mean slightly
On pretty much every single boss in Ulduar where you're constantly on the move SS glyph beats UB hands down for the following reasons
1. There's a far less chance that your diseases will fall off while you're running around
2. While you might get that free GCD from longer UB duration you loose 1 GCD every single time you use PS+IT instead of SS
3. the 25% proc chance of SS is a great way of opening on trash where you need to spread those diseases as fast as possible (think Thorim, Mimiron 3). While you cant relly on the proc the benefit of a 1st swing proc definitely outweighs the loss of dps from a diseaseless SS

Bottom line- my dps in Ulduar 25 dropped significantly when using the UB glyph. Glyphed back to SS and was #1 on the dps chart the following day

Well, no offense but your gear isn't anywhere close to top-of-the-line, and it is well understood that you aren't able to fully take advantage of the gained RP from the UB glyph until Tier 8, as Sekke stated.

Also, your reasons for why SS beats UB are dubious at best. As for your first reason it doesn't decrease the chances that your diseases will fall off when you're running around by much AT ALL. I can't think of a single fight where you're off your target for so long a time that your diseases fall off for a significant amount of time where an UB glyph wouldn't also be beneficial. Razorscale P1, you will be off him for a large amount of time, but the UB glyph will also serve a purpose because of adds. For something like Ignis you'd get stuck in his pot for 10 seconds, so your 21 second diseases would need to be below 10 seconds to fall off before you've been potted, plus that 25% chance has to occur before that time period. Case in point: It's minor.

Your second point is moot because the SS glyph doesn't gain any benefit from it either. It's just extraneous. It's well known that Unholy specs have an immense amount of free GCDs anyway.

Your third point is also ridiculous. If trash is dying so fast that you're not even bothering to put diseases up first to help out your casters AoE it down with EP, then you shouldn't even waste time swinging at it and it will likely die before your diseases tick once anyway.

Back on the true topic, though. I agree with Sekke that this is a discussion of SS vs. DD. UB is set in stone.

Though this is true you wont be able to avoid it and it has nothing to do with the SS glyph. If you are rolling both diseases you will never have more than 3 seconds of delay between either one ticking.

If you have both ticks proc a WP at the same time you lose one WP proc.
If you have ticks apart by 1 GCD (which is the only alternative playing properly) and both ticks proc WP you still lose a WP proc since 3 seconds have not passed after the first tick.

This makes the point moot and cannot be counted against the SS glyph but actually just against WP itself. Regardless, both my sheets and kahories sims (and parses in general) support the power of WP despite its misgivings.

(SS Glyph has enough against it already)

I tried to simulate a detailed 3 minute fight using the SS-glyph. The ols-file can be found here if anyone is interested in checking the math, although I'm pretty sure I didn't mess up.

More important are the results:

In a 3 minute fight, the SS glyph on average yields 4.3365 extra SS at the cost of the same number of IT-PS combinations and 21.6827 RP.

To see what this means in terms of DPS I took the Top 3 Parses from General Vezax Hard Mode on WMO and plugged in the average numbers of SS, IT, PS and DC.

This led to the following DPS gains (details in the ols-file):

Wearesc (US-Ysondre): 48.661
Amero (EU-Azshara): 11.377
Casteelzor (EU-Executus): 35.723

Wearesc had an extraordinarily high SS crit rate, while Amero's PS crit rate was very high, so the true value is probably about 30 DPS. However, this does not take into account disease clipping. So, here is some follow-up math:

Assuming every SS proc delays diseases by on average 1.5 seconds. So every other SS proc is statistically noteworthy, since 1.5 seconds is still in the margin of error in a 3 minute simulation, while 3 seconds equals an entire tick.

Let's further assume, that in moste cases disease reapplication by IT-PS clips diseases, as well (although it does not always happen in the simulation, but the percentage is statistically irrelevant). So the IT-PS we "save" must be counted in favor of the glyph in the final calculation.
In the simulation we "save" 4.3365 IT-PS, but have an overall count of 40.3365 SS casts. With a 25% chance to proc, the expected value of procs is 10.08. But remember the number of "saved" IT-PS, so the number of additional clips is 5.748, which is very close to 6. Since we assume, that only every other clip is punished by lost damage, we lose in the end about 3 ticks of diseases (per disease) over a 3 minute duraiton.

Using the same parses as in the simulation yields the following:

Wearesc
average FF tick: 970
average BP tick: 1055
WP to disease ticks ratio: 0.307
DPS lost: 44.11

Amero
average FF tick: 988
average BP tick: 1001
WP to disease ticks ratio: 0.275
DPS lost: 42.27

Casteelzor
average FF tick: 992
average BP tick: 986
WP to disease ticks ratio: 0.292
DPS lost: 42.59

While the benefit of the SS glyph depended highly on crit luck, the DPS loss from disease clipping equals in all three examples about 40 dps.

This simulation and the data show, that the SS glyph is at most a zero-loss change, but in most cases may even lead to slight dps losses, especially when leaving simulation-environment, which favors the glyph. If anyone finds errors in the math, please tell, since a major glyph that decreases dps is not really great.

And what about the glyph of plague strike? Still not worth considering?

No, it's significantly behind Dark Death. If you can deal with the standard Unholy 20 second rotation (which is not very hard to begin with), the optimal glyph selection appears to be UB, Dark Death and Ghoul.

My guild is just starting to do some serious work on hardmodes, and with all the things to lookout for and keep track of for myself and others, the ease of the SS glyph far outweighs the 30-50 dps "loss" (I don't even consider a dps loss because in actual combat I find it a dps increase). Thats just personal preference though and I understand the desire to try and theorycraft the best setup.

I don't understand how anyone can see the priority rotation as "easier" than a stone-set, solid rotation that you could potentially macro. My point is further pushed when considering that replacing the glyph that gives you 0 DPS gains and potentially causes a loss could be replaced by a glyph that very obviously gives an increase to net damage and will never be a DPS loss. This is about maximizing DPS, not causing a potential loss for the sake of what some may consider simplicity. The old priority rotation has now been shown to be a DPS loss as compared to a set rotation and should be moved to.

On a separate note involving WP, it was stated that normal IT+PS would cause clipping. I don't understand this when it was stated that WP has only a 1 second internal cooldown. Since our GCD is 1.5 seconds then the diseases will be ticking 1.5 seconds apart from each other and would NOT be consuming potential WP procs, thus further backing the anti-SS glyph rotation which causes them to tick simultaneously.

One question for clarification about the SS Glyph: Are the calculations/estimations being done with or without the 4P T7 bonus? I know that up top it was mentioned (by me and someone who backed me up) but with these new findings I don't know if it applies anymore.

4P T7 would seem to give a small boost to the SS Glyph, but without it there seems to be (if all of the above info is correct) no real reason to get it anymore.

The concerns I have about the letting go of the SS glyph are:

a) Rotations become less flexible and require more foresight. With the glyph you can skip a few strikes (for whatever reason you might want to do that) without immediately having to rethink how to get back into a cycle when you continue.
The priority-system basically stays intact except for one UF pair that has to go into PS, IT every 20 sec. When you exit and re-enter the rotation rather than just braining away your prioritys you now have to reassess which UF pair you are going to use for the next refresh and subsequently every 20 sec.

b) Due to the extra GCD's required it becomes more difficult to fit in other stuff when it comes off cooldown, like Horn of Winter. You can still cast Horn of Winter but you'll more often find yourself in a situation where it has to wait. Thereby reducing the amount of HoW's cast per fight and thus the Dps.

Some might argue that HoW has a 20 sec CD and therefor, if it fits into one rotation, it should fit in every rotation. However misses/dodges often shake up the rotation and HoW is usually the first victim to get skipped in order to catch up on more mandatory spells. You should of course try to fit it in somewhere else again but it usually keeps jumping around. More GCD's are going to block up the gaps you can dropp HoW back in.

Also HoW has no cushioning, so each microsecond you miss of the CD is going to haunt you for the rest of the fight. This eventually builds up until you'll just have to put it somewhere else.


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c) Not a concern but rather a thought. Perhaps it would be wiser to try to somehow get the two BS's and the two disease refreshes into different halfs of the 20 sec rotation. Because if you start your usual fight with PS, IT, SS, BS, BS you'll have 5 GCD's in the first half and only 3 (SS, SS, SS) in the other.
Though that would probably require some Blood Tap stunt and is likely redundant because of the rune-cushioning.

Nonetheless an example I can think of might be:
1. PS, IT, SS, BS, BT, SS (RP-Dump, BT-Cancel)
2. SS,......SS,.......BS, BS (RP-Dump)
3. PS, IT, SS, SS (RP-Dump)
continue 2./3. in a loop

Still this is only a simple rotation so you get the idea about how to set this up, I still prefer a priority-system for praxis. For those not quite understanding what happens here; if one Blood-rune is on CD as a Death-rune and you cast Blood Tap the effect somehow gets split up between both runes. The Death-rune becomes refreshed and the Blood-rune becomes converted. That's what allows for the subsequent SS in this rotation.
The cancelation of BT is there so BT won't disrupt the rotation when it runs out.

(This post took so many edits it could be Frankenstein's monster)