Mendoza

So I was being an idiot and the scaling on DC should be 15% = 1.15 (glyph of DD) x 1.15 (morbidity) = 19.8% scaling. Although factoring in that DC can crit the overall scaling between it and UB should be very similar.

I don't see morbidity as a bad single target dps talent. Assuming 15% of your damage comes from DC (which assuming 4 piece T7, glyph of DD and particularly if you take black ice) is very reasonable, then it's a 0.75% dps increase per talent point. Conversely abilities which are physical damage / auto-attack based are going to be squeezed because the changes in 3.1 boost other sources of damage - SS (outbreak), DC (glyph) and all spell damage (black ice) which is going to reduce the relative power of necrosis and BCB (not massively so, but if necrosis was a 0.8% increase it would be worth closer to 0.7% now).

 

Hidden

Unluckily I had a bluescreen while writing my post so I'll summarize what I was writing.

The Naxx BiS list in the OP isn't BiS according to statvalues, what I'm using is this setup:
chardev.org v6 ~ a World of Warcraft character planner

According to statvalues it's way stronger than the one in the OP while being almost hitcapped as Alliance (theoretically you could even use Melancholy Sabatons that give some additional DPS but I prefer being hitcapped).

Those numbers are so much off, did you even calculate the uptimes or are you using guestimates?

Some maths (using Unholy BiS gear values - different values used don't change much anyway):
Attack Speed: ~2.5
Average period between damaging specials: ~1.7
Seconds/Attack: ~1
Crit against bosses: ~43%
Seconds/Crit: ~2.33

[Grim Toll] (45sec ICD, 15% on hits, 10sec duration, 612 ArP)
Passive: 83*1.968=163.3
Proc: 612*0.938*10/(45+1/0.15)=111.1
Total: 274.4

[Darkmoon Card: Greatness] (45sec ICD, 35% on hits, 15sec duration, 300 Strength)
Passive: 90*2.964=266.8
Proc: 300*2.964*15/(45+1/0.35)=278.7
Total: 545.5

[Mirror of Truth] (45sec ICD, 10% on crits, 10sec duration, 1000 AP)
Passive: 84*1.341=112.6
Proc: 1000*1*10/(45+2.33/0.1)=146.4
Total: 259.0

[Fury of the Five Flights]
Total: 320

[Bandit's Insignia] (45sec ICD, 15% on hits, 1504-2256 damage) (assumed its damage is increased by all spell debuffs on the target and damage buffs on the DK)
Passive: 190
Proc: (1504+2256)/2/(45+1/0.15)=36.4 DPS *1.13 (CoE)*1.15 (BP)*1.05(Desecration)*1.1(RoR)=54.6 DPS *1.215 (assuming it scales of your character's crit)=66.3 DPS
Total: 190 AP + 66.3 DPS

 

Dachef

So keeping ghoul frenzy up is confirmed dps increase? I guess I'm finding it awkward to keep it in my rotation.

 

Foxx2405

Well there are 3 situations to use it.

1. Your ghoul is taking a beating. Ghoul Frenzy is quite a lot better than Death coil to patch up your pet
2. You have blood tap ready, and bone shield is either on cooldown or doesn't need refreshing.
3. In the middle of a rotation.

Situation 1 is pretty clear that it is useful. The question remains how often this applies though.

Situation 2 is a definite DPS advantage. Bone Shield has a 2 minute cooldown, so you can at least use BT+GF every other minute, and if Bone shield doesnt need refreshing, than every minute at minimum which is a pretty high dps gain.
Since we have no real alternative for using blood tap.

Situation 3 is questionable. I calculated that it is a definite dps increase using the 3.0.9 damage numbers. However I'm not sure about the 3.1 damage and the consequences.
Calculations on it are here: Unholy DPS Discussion

They aren't complete because assuming the 4xT7 bonus SS also generates an extra 10 RP.

As for the rotation issue, its not that hard:

If you only use it on blood tap once a minute (that is still 96 dps, or (assuming 6k dps) 1.60% dps for 1 talent point), you can simply macro it in 1 button:

And use it right after you used either your 2 blood or 2 death runes (either way works, since blood tap keeps that specific rune a death rune for 30 seconds)

If you want to use it in your regular rotation it gets a bit more tricky.

Assuming Icy Touch is the hardest hitting single rune ability, than one simply replaces any FU or DD rune with Ghoul Frenzy + Icy Touch.
If Icy Touch isn't the highest single rune dps ability, then you'll have to use your 2 death runes for a Ghoul Frenzy + PS/BS (whichever of the 2 does more damage)

If people have some damage numbers with crit percentages i can do some calculations. I simply used my own patchwerk WWS in the calculations i linked.

Dont underestimate Ghoul Frenzy either though. Your ghoul's white damage (so not claw, just auto attack) can be as much as 10% raid buffed. Improving that with 25% haste, gives an extra 2.5% dps.

The only question is how heavy is the loss of 1 SS, if you also consider the RP lost and the chance to refresh diseases.

 

Derivel

I don't believe that Wandering Plague is worth much in the consideration of crit due to its internal cooldown. If you have, say, 35% crit raid buffed and you are fighting an AOE pack then you are probably going to have WP going off every cooldown regardless of that extra 5% crit. This is all assuming you are basing your belief off WP.

 

Gavain

@Derivel

I was not referring to WP. As I wrote +crit is affecting DoTs through diseases, BB and DnD while fighting multiple mobs or a boss with adds within range. In fact I totally forgot about WP, but thats just one more factor supporting my line of thought

In my opinion this is shifting the higher value towards Dark Conviction, considering the other points I stated before.

I can resist anything, but temptation (O.Wilde)

 

fainDK

I think it would be a great help if you also put the best Rune to use on your weapon on the first page. I read the whole thread now and can not find it answered anywhere, only asked.

Which is the Rune of choice on the weapon with 3.1? I am using Fallen Crusader atm but I remember seeing that it got nerfed. Is it still the best for Unholy DPS or is there something else we should be using?


I apologize if this is against the rules (I don't think it is), but I couldn't find this information anywhere in the thread, and being the new Unholy DPS thread it should definetely have it listed in the main post on the front page.

 

Miracleknight

It didn't exactly get nerfed, they cut it's effect in half but doubled it's up time, so you'll see smaller crits but it will be more consistant.

 

joypunk

I disagree with the "Ideal gear from Naxxramas" list that was posted.

Zerack posted an optimal gear list on page 32 of the old discussion thread that showed higher DPS numbers than the list you're currently providing.

Elitist Jerks - Unholy DPS Discussion - Page 32 - On Optimal Gearing

It's academic at this point, since we have new gear from Ulduar to discover which will replace some of this list, even if we keep 4pc T7.5. However, I do think the most accurate list should be posted if you're going to reference the Naxxramams level BiS gear.

 

Mishara

If your implication is that DoTs from Diseases benefit from Crit, outside of WP, then you would be incorrect.

 

Javahead

I've been testing some builds on Live now, these 2 "cookie-cutter" builds in particular and I can't even break 2800 dps, even though I have pretty good (though not the best) gear. I can't help but think if it would be better for the 0/10/61 to drop 2 points in Necrosis and the point in Scourge Strike and put them in Annihilation instead, going with Obliterate as the main attack instead of Scourge Strike.

I've been looking around in the old thread (although I admit, not every single post) but I can't really find any math and/or answer on it. Doing test with a 0/13/58, it seems as if Obliterate hits for more. But then again, with the Glyph of SS (and SS, of course), we have a 25% chance to save a Frost + Unholy rune, and then there's the points in Necrosis as well.

Of course, these tests might be a bit off (and that's why I hesitate to post any actual numbers and screen shots), seeing how it is close to impossible to spend more than a minute on the dummy without someone else having a go at it as well.

Is there something to this, or should I spend more time figure out what the hell I'm doing wrong when I can't break 3k on the boss dummy?

 

Derivel

As Mishara just said WP is the only way for DOTs to crit. I did a little math to compare the value of adding 5% crit rating. It shows the chance for WP to proc given a varying number of mobs. Obviously the chance with 1 mob = base crit chance:

Crit %	2 Mobs	3 Mobs	4 Mobs	5 Mobs
35%	58%	73%	82%	88%
40%	64%	78%	87%	92%
45%	70%	83%	91%	95%

I derived this by using 1-Pr[no proc on any mob] where Pr[no proc on any mob] = (1-Crit%)^(# mobs). Pretty sure that is valid.

To me this shows that, although there is definitely an increase in the chance for WP to proc when you bump your crit by 5%, there probably won't be a noticeable difference in proc chance in real AOE situations.

DnD and BB of course will still crit. There the value of crit isn't artificially restricted.

 

Faerlun

Ok, I see the point of the second epidemic now, I totally missed the fact that it could carry over to the next 20s rotation period. If I remember my stats calculations correctly, that gives a (0.75)^6 = 0.178 chance of NOT refreshing from glyph of SS, or about an 82% chance of refreshing the disease, which is pretty good!

I think I'm going to start with the points in IUP while learning Ulduar. If fights turn out to not make very much use of them i'll move em to necrosis.

By the way, with the lower impurity bonus damage, is it actually still better than necrosis?

 

Griefpb

Unless I'm mistaken Obliterate doesn't do Shadow or Frost Damage, so your not getting the buff from Black Ice. Are you doing these tests on a target dummy? Because they give far lower results than what you would see in a raid situation.

 

Javahead

Yes you are correct. Scourge Strike does its damage as shadow damage, whereas Obliterate does normal damage. I'm not completely sure which of our spells actually do shadow damage. I assume Death Coil does, obviously, and so does Death & Decay, Blood Plague, and Unholy Blight. I'm not sure that Scourge Strike together with Black Ice trumps Obliterate to be honest. Will do some testing tonight (gonna watch the football game now) and see if I can post any results worth mentioning.

And yeah, the tests are done on the Nemesis Heroic Boss Dummy in the Ebon Hold.

 

Vinclass

@Javahead:
There are some ups and downs to considering Oblit as your primary damage dealer. First of all, you'll gain serious stat weight for ArP. Keep in mind that training dummy tests will be inadequate in this case, as you'll be comparing a physical strike whose damage is buffed substantially by armor reduction (Ie Sunder/FF) versus a self-provided EP for scourge strike.

A major detriment, though, is that you give up glyph of scourge strike, meaning you need to refresh your diseases much more often. This means fewer oblits vs scourge strikes overall, as well as greatly devaluing the talent points used to get there.

Ultimately, though, it's hard to compare specs like this with a training dummy, as the raid multipliers/buffs that are essential to each spec are different.

 

Axeurface

In the spec posted for blood/unholy, would putting two points from necrosis into Runic Power Mastery be a poor decision? Granted that the Gargoyle can only stay alive for 40 seconds now anyway, depending on timing it could make a difference between wasted GCD while the Gargoyle is active (because you don't have the RP to cast Death Coil) and could also allow refreshing an expiring Unholy Blight buff right after Gargoyle is cast without shortening the Gargoyle's lifespan.

 

Malcophant

I posted this in the pet thread as well, but either Gargoyle or the tooltip is bugged, as it only lasts 30 seconds. I tested it multiple times, with and without runic power mastery, and every time it lasted no longer than 30 seconds. On a similar note, the reduced RP usage of gargoyle makes it fairly trivial to keep up UB along with deathcoiling, at least with the 0/10/61 spec. The additional runic power makes it extremely easy to dump while keeping enough to ensure gargoyle stays up.

 

Derivel

If you are looking at this you might as well take those points out of Outbreak as its main purpose is to buff SS. Or maybe Desecration, which loses a lot of value if you aren't using SS.

Are you also considering the buffs of Outbreak and EP to SS? Those along with the SS glyph and Desecration are important considerations in its damage.

 

frigginwizard

because he will have to manually refresh diseases desecration should still see good uptime from plague strikes. Not that it matters though, with no access to talents that buff oblits crit/dmg I dont think it will be able to pull away from SS in terms of overall dmg after reapplication of diseases.

 

Stein

Yes, those were scary bad. Thanks for working up some more accurate numbers. (incidentally, I came up with the same Naxx BIS as you)

Couple of comments on the above:

- FotFF doesn't account for ramp up or for the buff falling off due to movement. fights with dps gaps will favor the proc based trinkets more than basic numbers will show.
- grim toll obviously has a lot of hit, and it's pretty difficult to find the room for all of it (esp since we're not stacking another stat like armor penn).
- Is [Darkmoon Card: Death] better than Bandit's? Since being buffed, the proc is a little better (plus, it's buffed by black ice):

Proc: ((1750+2250)/2)/(45+1/0.35)*1.13*1.15*1.05*1.1*1.215 = 76 DPS (84 dps w/black ice)
1.13 (CoE), 1.15 (BP), 1.05(Desecration), 1.1(RoR), 1.215 (???)
Passsive: (85 * 1.4) = 119

Total: 119 + 76 DPS

So that leaves me wondering about the conversion of AP to dps.

 

Miracleknight

I'm thinking of putting some time into an excel sheet utilizing the values from the table to give a rating to each piece of gear, but before I do; does anyone already have something to that effect that could be utilized or that they are already working on?

Also on Obliterate: many points have been added about that, you're basically abandoning a lot of what the Unholy tree has to offer and are just using Unholy for Ghoul, Gargoyle, and Unholy blight and that... I mean it comes down to opinion but that kind of sounds like you're sacrificing some of the fun of Unholy, the magic and disease effects that would otherwise be removed. I'm curious what your tests bring up, but I think that even if you showed a marginal or decent upgrade in DPS (Which I would be shocked to find) I would rather stick with Scourge strike myself, to round off this post.

 

Tanoooki

Regarding the Ghoul Frenzy.
Dose any of you have a bar which is able to time it? So im able to see when it runs out eg.

 

Derivel

I think the main reason SS causing desecration makes it a good talent is because it is more immune to movement now. If you aren't using SS then you have to stand within 8 or 10 yards or whatever of the spot you used PS at for the duration of the buff. With SS dropping it you will be reapplying the ground effect very often, allowing you to most likely retain the benefit of it for all of your other damage that does not apply Desecration.

I agree that Oblit should not beat out SS and would be surprised to see it do so, but if it actually does in a non-pathological case it would be good to figure that out so it can be fixed =P.

 

Axeurface

I'm not sure if NeedToKnow or ClassTimers lets you watch pet buffs. Either way, you could use this macro:

/cast Blood Tap
/cast Ghoul Frenzy
/sw 30
/script Stopwatch_Play();
/in 30 /script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("**** GHOUL FRENZY DOWN! RECAST! ****");

You can change the messages to your liking.