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.

Going from zero to a hundred a thirty isn't as easy, then you're using 40RP UB, AND death coils. The extra ten seconds added to the rotation would be easier to regain RP for a gargoyle or rune-downtime death coils.


And I read that people are dropping the SS glyph?

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.

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.

Good Evening,

My guild has recently switched my role to DPS. With my current gear and spec I was averaging 3.5k DPS in Ulduar 25.
I'm not sure where I am gear wise to justify using either of the 2 DPS specs (12/0/59) or (0/10/61). Right now I'm actually running with (1/10/60). Looking for some rotation and spec advice. I am already working on my Ebonblade Rep; been to busy raiding, and doing Heroics to bother with my JC Daily.

My WoW Heroes Link
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Thank You,
Cypruschill.

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.

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.