Oblit can come very close to SS damage theoretically. The issues discussed above make it less attractive. Essentially, you would need enough ArP to give a substantial gain over SS when considering the loss in DPS and convenience from all factors (Oblit requires a glyph to be on par with SS as well as the lack of Desecration procs to name a few). Basically if you want to do physical damage you need to stack ArP and with that same gear you would put out more dps as Blood than you would as Oblit-Unholy. You will be basically shooting yourself in the foot by buffing your Physical but nerfing your pets/spells.

So, my point is, unless you have a strong desire to wear ArP gear and still be Unholy, you can get more out of gearing for other stats and focusing on the strengths of the talent tree. If you want ArP go Blood for DPS.

Regardless it's nice to see some thinking outside the box.

I am using NeedToKnow to track it for me. Not a fan of ClassTimers, so I'm not sure there.

So, GHOUL FRENZY.

I ran some testing with it + blood tap today; the results were disappointing. If I use up both my blood runes and then blood tap + ghoul frenzy, the use of the death rune for ghoul frenzy causes it to regen as a blood rune again. This puts the second half of my rotation as 1 death 1 blood instead of 2 death, preventing a scourge strike.

I then tried doing it after using my blood runes from death rune form. That seemed to work at first but strangely, after using the blood tap'd death rune for ghoul frenzy, it regen'd as death again. That's fine, I just need to blood strike with it and it should regen as a death rune again. It even started to display it as regening again as death, but right before the regen finishes it switched to being a blood rune again, preventing again the usual 2 death rune scourge strike. I don't understand what is causing that, it seems like a bug. Can anyone confirm similar experiences?

If the blood tap trick really doesn't work, we're back to having to sacrifice a scourge strike for a ghoul frenzy + icy touch or ghoul frenzy + plague strike if using a set of death runes for it.

Had the exact same results with ghoul frenzy testing. Had to give up an SS when I bloodtapped it. I guess I'm missing something

Use it after you use a scourge strike, not after you use your blood strikes. IE

BS-> BS -> SS -> SS -> SS (death runes) + Blood tap + Ghoul Frenzy

Yes, doing BS -> BS -> Ghoul Frenzy will screw up your rotation.

The second issue is because of Blood tap makes it a death rune for 20 seconds, I would put into the macro a cancel aura for blood tap. (That's how you cancel buffs right?)

[Darkmoon Card: Death]:119 AP + 76 DPS

Ran some sims with kahorie's tool. 8x24hrs removing high/low for default and default+100 AP. Per those sims:

100 AP : 62 DPS

which would give us:

[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]: 338 dps (545.5 ap)
[Fury of the Five Flights]: 198 dps (320 ap)
[Bandit's Insignia]: 184 dps (297 ap)
[Grim Toll]: 170 dps (274.4 ap)
[Mirror of Truth]: 160 dps (259 ap)
[Darkmoon Card: Death]: 150 dps (158 w/black ice) (242/254 ap)

Keep in mind that the FotFF number doesn't account for time to stack buff or buff falling off.

I see in some peoples rotation they use BS over BB..why?

I go PS>IT>SS>BB>BB>then as many SS i can get while diseases are up

Because BB doesn't proc death runes anymore? You lose out on an extra SS.

So whats better Unholy or Blood?

From what I have done today on Ignis, Blood proved to be much better. We did about 10 tries and my Blood dps was 1000DPS higher than in Unholy spec with exactly the same gear. I have BiS with 4xt7.5 and Betrayer. Specs I used were 51/0/20 [DS Ghoul DD] and 0/10/61 [SS Ghoul DD]. That surprised me quite a lot, I expected Unholy to be better just because of run speed in Blood Presence. My blood rotation was suboptimal for sure, and I played Unholy a lot in 3.0.9 and I think I didn't do anything wrong at all there. .

Necrosis would be the better talent.
The maths been done in the old thread, just search necrosis. I believe Dark Conviction is work .4% dps per point and Necrosis is .8% per point, or something along those lines.

The one that everyones been using for Unholy for a while now.

PS>IT>BS>BS>SS>RP Dump
SS>SS>SS>RP Dump
SS til your diseases are down, or restart rotation.

re: keeping track of ghoul frenzy

fasthack solution:
/castsequence reset=30 Ghoul Frenzy, Heavy Frostweave Bandage

Works pretty well for a crisp visual indicator of up/down status without having to install another addon - classtimers and power auras are pretty deeply customized at this point.

However, I don't have a good way to track Garg up other than watching SCT closely for that dmg out. Theoretical gargoyle time and actual "there is a gargoyle alive and spamming" are really different. Quartz was mentioned in another thread; not sure if that tracks actual uptime. Maybe I could go after the debuff on the target? Would love any input.

Classtimers can track the Frenzy buff (you have to create a custom timer for it). It does take a little configuration to get it to show all those timers.

What were you pulling as Blood? Tonight in 10 man on Ignis as 0/10/61, I was able to sustain around 4200-4500 for most attempts with my highest ~4600 on our best attempt for the night (slag bug + server crashage FTL). I'll be trying out 12/0/59 next time we go in there and see how I do. Seeing almost 11k Scourge Strike crits was pretty awesome however.

Sry, but what is BiS?

I am 100% certain you are doing something very wrong, in all of tonight´s raiding me and the blood DK were absolutely hand in hand in dps in ALL fights (up to XT-002), although I tended to have the upper hand. Completely forgot to /combatlog, amidst everything that I had to keep track of on patch day, bah.

Ok I did some 10-man ulduar yesterday using the 10/61 spec.

First of all, I personally didn't really have any aggro issues, although i haven't been in real aoe situations yet so that might be the exception.

We killed Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002 Deconstructor and Kologarn. Ignis was buggy, and we didnt have the right setup nor the time to invest in the council.

First things first, i did about 4000-4500 dps average (in 10 man, only melee buff being 10% AP or 20% haste depending on the DK tank), which is way higher than i had before. So either some other people are doing something wrong, or i'm doing something right.
Although I did have some issues, namely that my disease timers weren't tracking my own diseases very well. We had a DK tank with us who had shorter diseases, and sometimes it would just switch to his, so i'd completely lose track of my own. Have to see if i can fix that before the next run.

Second of all, the heal component from Ghoul Frenzy, is really useful. Deconstructor seems to be slightly overtuned, but one of his effects, affect the pet as well. So it was taking weird damage sometimes.

I really can't say what the best use for ghoul frenzy is. Sometimes i tried to use it as much as possible, other time i used it only when it needed the heal, or i had a free blood tap.
To be honest the latter seemed to work best, as the former really messes up rotations.

A few remarks:

- Use ghoul frenzy before you start the boss, just like 3-5 seconds before you run in and your rune will be up again when you need it.
- Preventing the ghoul from dying is important. With the cooldown now starting when it dies, you lose a lot of dps. So ghoul frenzy really helps out there.

Alright, I don't understand how people are managing to hit ~5k dps and beyond. I know I don't have the very top end gear, but it's not simple stuff either.

profile: The World of Warcraft Armory
now I'm not specced the way armoury shows it, because I definately have SS (its 12/0/59)
The ring that armoury won't display is from Uludar ([Bladebearer's Signet])

I'm doing the rotation of
IT-PS-BS-BS-SS-SS
SS-SS-SS

Dropping UB if its not up and punching out deathcoils if my next attack will push me past the RP limit.

However, I'm only getting ~3k DPS (in 3.1 and about 2500-3000 pre 3.1) so I'm confused as to what I am doing wrong when I see other people in worse gear doing just as much DPS if not more. I'm timing my Gargoyle with my procs and using up my trinkets, etc. I've scoured through most of the DPS discussions to find what it is i'm missing but I can't seem to pick it. I'll record a battle and post WWS stats tonight if that helps.

Or am I expecting too much of my gear?

If there is somewhere else I should be posting this, let me know and ill move it immediately.

Yesterday did some Ulduar 10-man aswell.

Tho we didnt have too much time, we still managed to down FlameLOL at first try and did some try's on bugged Ignis and Razorscale.

Brought the 12/0/59 spec (without GF, to try out) and did around 3500-4000 dps.
Today, on 25-man, im bringing 0/10/61 to see the difference or to check how to go into play with the GF.

Comparing spec with 10 man buffs to other spec with 25 man buffs is not so smart.

You can avoid (and exploit?) the "CD starting when Ghoul dies"-thing by mounting with your Ghoul summoned. The game seems to think: "Ghoul disappeared - start CD!".

And to contribute something to the Ghoul Frenzy-discussion: I had some 10-and-25-man Ulduar yesterday and Ghoul Frenzy helped alot to keep my friend alive on some fights like Razorscale with all the Devouring Flames.