You should not be casting Death Coil at the expense of strikes unless are you capped at Runic Power or are very close to the cap.

Previous to 3.2 I was hit and expertise capped but had only 1 piece of gear (Favor of the Dragon Queen) with armor pen. My question: for Obliterate UH, would it be worth going under expertise cap in favor of stacking more armor pen gear? I assume yes, but I haven't seen any relative stat weights with expertise included and I'm not very good with the simulators.

I ran my stats* through the sim and got the following EP #'s :

EP :AttackPower = 100
EP :Strength = 311
EP :Agility = 62
EP :CritRating = 82
EP :HasteRating = 54
EP :ArmorPenetrationRating = 134
EP :ExpertiseRating = 182
EP :HitRating = 368
EP :WeaponDPS = 714

Do they seem accurate? The low Haste and lower then 100 crit has me worried they are not.

* Armory doesn't show how much ArP Rating I have. I have 250 rating.

@Iachian | Those numbers can't possibly be right for the exact reason you pointed out - Haste is only equivalent to 0.5 AP? Haste was ~1.5 in 3.1, and there is nothing which should directly (or indirectly) affected its value, so it should be relatively unchanged. Crit will probably be lower now than it was due to Obliterate's smaller modifier, but it shouldn't be that large of a gap. I would also expect ArP to be rated higher.

All in all, yeah, those just seem too off the mark. Not sure why the sim hates me/us =(

@ProdigalTim | Expertise is higher rated now than it was in 3.1, due to pet's benefiting. Chances are that, point for point, it still beats armor pen, but as previously discussed, no accurate weightings have been established concretely. Of course if you are trading expertise for armor pen at something like a 1 for 2 ratio, than by all means, go for it, but in equal amounts, stick with the expertise. Such is my two cents/what seems logical to me.

Long time reader, first time posting blah blah... getting to the point, I have two topics of discussion.

First, I was VERY disapointed in Blizzard nerfing SS, imo it is still unwarranted. I have now adapted the 0/17/54 build. One question has always lingered in my mind sense reading your dps discussions even pre-Ulduar, and that is the topic of what pressence you should use.

In naxx 25 it was Blood pressence hands down (save the loatheb encounter). Once I found myself in Ulduar with 4 piece t8+ I always found a 200-400dps increase when in Unholy Pressence. Everyone can do the math, 1 sec faster rune refresh times (if spec'd), 15% haste, more runic power gen., increased weapon swings means more necrosis yada yada yada, but at the cost of 15% harder swiings, 15% more everything.

With the changes to Unholy and the usage of Obi, which pressence is superior Blood or Unholy? I've seen posts compairing specs, the 0/17/54 seems to remain superior, I was wondering with the changes forced upon our tree, would those changes influence the usage of a different pressence?

Does anyone have any hard date to confirm which Pressence still reigns supreme?

If so, and assuming Unholy pressence fell second, did that sim account for the added haste given to our pets: Ghoul, Gargoyle, and AotD?

Second, I've searched but have not found any discussions on what Glyphs we should use. I assume Glyph of Obi and Ghoul, but the last im guessing is between Dark Death vs UB.

Think of it this way: 15% damage > 15% haste. Why? Because 15% damage affects all of your personal damage. This is an approximate 12% boost to your total dps. 15% haste, on the other hand, affects your autoattack/necrosis/ghoul/garg, and is an approximate 5-6% dps boost. Thus the only way Unholy Presence can pull ahead of Blood Presence is if you can utilize the additional GCDs it grants.

Your rotation without any extra RP from AMS/Disc Priest/Resto Druid consists of 1x PS, 1x IT, 2x BS, 4x OB, 1x HoW, 4x DC. This is a total of 13 GCDs over the 20 second interval, which comes out to 20.5. Thus you can fit in your entire rotation within the necessary time (that 0.5 second overlap is pretty meaningless and doesn't actually hurt your dps due to the two second "grace" period of rune refreshes). You wouldn't be able to use those extra GCDs of Unholy at all, thus it can't hope to compete with Blood Presence.

Imp UH Presence isn't a factor, since the rune refresh aspect of it is actually meaningless due to that two second "grace" period. Hard to explain, but yeah, runs refreshing at 9 seconds doesn't actually change anything in reality.

Glyphs should be Obliterate, Ghoul, and Dark Death. Dark Death is far superior to UB (DD increases your DC damage by 15% and, by doing so, also increases your UB damage by 15%. The UB glyph only gives 40% to UB, so you're actually gaining a mere 25% UB damage over DD. And 25% UB damage is far, far inferior to 15% of your DC damage. In any circumstance at any gear level).

Edit - To below, just a typo ><. Meant inferior there, not superior. Posting that at 1am was probably bad.

I'm confused here, as your assertion doesn't seem to match up with your explanation.

I'll answer for him (Death Coil damage being set to 1 for this explanation):

Glyph of Unholy Blight: 1 + (1 * 0.2 * 1.4) = 1.28
Glyph of Dark Death: 1 * 1.15 * 1.2 = 1.38

Smacked the dummy a bit with Sigil of Virulence today before trading it back to the vendor. I did not see a DPS increase (was slightly under actually) versus using Vengeful Heart. Using 3/13/55 and the standard rotation I was able to keep it up 100% over 3 ten minute tests. Did not have a chance to test it in a raid environment but I think I'll be saving my emblems in the meantime. Haven't been able to find much discussion in this thread regarding which Sigil to use yet. Anyone have some math to back up why one is better than the other?

You should be using Vengeful Heart --> [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart]
Math has been proven earlier.

New sigil is garbage, Greatness is probably your best trinket choice above everything save Death's Verdict which is a better proc. of greatness.
Death's Verdict - Items - Sigrie
Since the tier 9 2 set bonus and the new sigil have similar buffs *both str* and both being weaker than Greatness or death's verdict, Virulence will not benefit you, as you will have tier 9 4 set bonus, and replace Greatness with Death's Verdict.

Uh, the above poster is utterly incorrect. The sigil stacks with 2 piece tier 9, Greatness, etc... why wouldn't it? You can have more than one temporary strength (or any stat) buff. Assuming the sigil still doesn't have an icd (as your post seems to indicate; can't test myself), it is a passive 200 strength. That is incredible. The reason why Vengeful Heart appears better on a test dummy is because it gives a flat amount of damage - it will increase your DC (and overall DPS) by X, in a raid or out. Strength, on the other hand, will scale with raid buffs. Stuff like Kings, Trueshot, Windfury, etc, all increase it's value.

Plug it in to any simulator, and you will see a clear and obvious increase.

I can scrounge up some math, if necessary, once I'm out of my raid, but you can easily see the dramatic difference in dps via the sim.

Anyways, it's better to not post than post information which is flat out wrong. Like the person above.

Also, to a few posts above those, that was a typo on my part. Meant inferior, not superior. Fixed it. Bad mistake to make =p

The build i saw in the forum posts had lichborne, and as usable as it may be in specific fights, for a higher tank n spank dps i suppose skipping both lichborne and icy reach and putting those two in icy talons would be better.
Sure i can agree that some talents although not directly equal higher dps but indirectly but for some people the icy talons are better.

Icy talons does not stack with (Imp.) WF or IIT, so in any 25 man raid in which you have a DK with ITT or a shaman (Hint: You should), Icy Talons is not a DPS upgrade. It may be beneficial in 10 mans where you may not have the shaman or a frost DK, but icy reach and Lichborne have slightly more use than Icy Talons in 25 man raids.

If Virulence is superior to Vengeful Heart, then if one picks up Virulence, does that change the math regarding 0/17/54 vs 3/13/55 b/c relative RP value is reduced?

I purchased the Sigil last night for Jaraxxus, Deconstructor, and Kologarn. I was seeing a large decrease in Death Coil damage (700 non-crits, 1500 crits per Death Coil) along with a modest increase (100-200 or so) along the board for my other abilities (except Unholy Blight). I didn't get the best comparisons though with my previous week using Vengeful Heart, so I returned it before the time limit. Tonight I'll try again with the rest of Ulduar.

If you have the Emblems and aren't in urgent need of tier or vendor items, I suggest doing the same. You get a two hour grace period that I think can be extended by rebuying it. I'm not for sure on that though.

Edit: My memory seems pretty similar to Alyse's simulation. I think I'll end up keeping it, as a 100 dps gain isn't something I think I'll gain easily with tier shoulders or some trinket.

I did some simulations 2 weeks back regarding 3/13/55 vs. 0/17/54.
While 0/17/54 was 150 dps ahead with the DC sigil, 3/13/55 pulled within 50dps when using Sigil of Virulence (asuming 100% uptime).

So yes, with the new sigil 3/13/55 seems much more attractive.

I bought the the new sigil before last night's raid and went totally bananas with it. What i do is hit Blood Tap before a pull this way i can open with one quick Obliterate to get the Buff going combined with any other procs then i apply diseases.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

#8 Thorim (Hard Mode)
#2 Kologarn
#3 Auriaya
#5 Ignis

Impressive. I'm confused as to how your opening rotation works though... if you open with blood tap then you're sitting with 1B 1D 2F 2U runes. After OB you'll have 1B 1D 1F 1U. PS and IT puts you at 1B 1D which doesn't seem to accomplish anything. What am I missing here?

On a side note, I've seen a lot of simulations run with 2HStatSet2 yet for the life of me, google and forum searches are not leading me to find the simulator to run myself. Where can i get/use it?

The simulator can be found here.

I'm also slightly confused about the opening rotation - what function does the blood tap have? If you wanted to get the procs and such to go off, you could OB off the bat, then PS/IT, BSx2 to use all your runes, still covering the function you mentioned of having procs go off before applying diseases without using blood tap.

That's just the name of a setting in Kahorie's.

Gotta little question here:

Is Unholy Blight really worth investing a point in it? I mean, it does only 2-3% of my overall DPS, so maybe it's better to lay hands on another talent, like Ghoul Rage? Or is it really worth that one Point. At the Moment I am thinking it's not that good, but maybe someone here is able to do some math 'bout that.

And another Question: At the Moment I have 2 Points in Icy Talons, and 2 Points in Chill of the Grave, but I think it's not really worth. I usualle have a shaman in my Group, who is giving me a haste bonus, and the additional runic power, I don't really think it does that much. So maybe it's better to put 1 Point in Necrosis and the other 3 in Wandering Plague. Or is everything I wrote here absolutely nonsense?

If 2 to 3% is correct then it's still a great return on a single talent point.

You wont find any better replacement.