Ultrix

Might be a silly question but whats the ranking order among 4pT7, 2pT7+2pT8 and 4pT8 for Unholy 2H DPS?

 

Sekke

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure it's 4P T7>4P T8>2P T7+2PT8

Il dolce far niente.

 

ahri

As blood I was pulling between 4500 and 5200. As Unholy I did around 3600-4000.

I have no idea what, then. It's not that hard to play Unholy :/. My diseases were up all the time, didn't lose gargoyle and had UB up all the time too. Didn't get overboard with RP either. Ghoul was not on passive . Maybe I just got very unlucky with being eaten up those tries. Today I'll go with 12/0/59 instead and see how it turns out (although I'll probably be Blood most of the tries because our enhancement shaman won't come ).

 

reflexdk

You're expecting too much...

You have too much hit (aim for 263), and you don't have DPS enhancing professions such as Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing.

Bear in mind that the top DPS DK's are almost all using BiS gear with 4 piece T7.5 bonus, using all max consumables and Betrayer...

 

Tanoooki

Do you mind explaining how? I seem to have tried every possible way to add a custom timer with Ghoul Frenzy.

 

Nahela

Has anybody tried messing around with Glyph of Disease for disease refreshes instead of Glyph of Scourge Strike? I was trying it last night, seems to make rotations have awkward sets, especially when using Ghoul Frenzy as well.

 

Miracleknight

Yeah there were tests done with Glyph of Disease, it doesn't add any damage and at worse case it causes a DPS loss because if you refresh your diseases say at 2 seconds so they're 1 second away from ticking, you will have to wait another 3 seconds for it to tick. Obviously this applies to Scourge Strike, but at least that does a lot of damage. It's only useful for AOE :/. I've added that to the Q and A section.

Also added Macros to the guide, I'll do gems sometime soon as well. If anyone has any new macros to add, those were all I found in the Macro thread, feel free to PM it to me.

 

Drenhar

Man, this just feels like a kick to the danglies.

I'm using the 12/9/59 setup now, and it's only giving me around 2750 dps on the boss dummy. (have yet to enter a heroic, our realm's instances are still down).

According to recount, my top 3 dps abilities are: SS (29%) melee (22%) death coil (15%).

Knowing that, I wonder; would it be a dps boost to take the 3 points out of morbiditiy and throw them into necrosis? I'm using the death coil glyph, so essentially i would back to normal damage on death coil from 3.0.8.

Any thoughts?

 

Miracleknight

Yeah, stop putting so much emphasis on the Test Dummy damage. Things change drastically in a raid setting. And remember that DKs were overpowered before; I know Overpowered means more fun, but as long as you are doing the best you can, enjoying what you're doing and putting DPS that isn't just so far down you are disgracing the raid; try to worry less about it especially at the beginning of new content. We're not meant to be top DPS in a raid, I know it feels sometimes like you're failing if you're not; but it should rarely be that way.

 

Xisuthros

Where did you get those extra 9 points from?

Anyhow: I am also 12/0/59 and get the same low DPS results as you. 2.5-2.6k on a dummy. I know I dont have BiS gear but I should perform better then that..

 

Twinbladez

I know this is probably a stupid question, but are you guys raid buffed in those tests?

 

Pyhrrus

I thought I'd try my hand on an IUP analysis for those of you who are still trying to decide. This has been discussed at length in other posts (in the other thread), but most of those other posts were either hand-waiving or taking things to extremes to prove possibilities. So I'd like to take a closer, hopefully more realistic look.

Arguments and justifications for the napkin math to follow:

Most fights where movement is required involve a certain amount of waiting or other situations where your movement speed simply doesn't help. Extreme example: Heigan. When he's up on the platform, your 15% bonus gives you nothing. Example 2: Sapph. When she flies, you need to move, but speed doesn't help. Then you stand (behind a block). And only when she comes back down do you get help from a speed buff.

Some of the time where moving is required, you can still be hitting the target for some amount of the time you are moving. Extreme example: again, Heigan. You must move during the melee portion of this fight, and while 1st-timers might be well advised to turn to move faster, it can be done without missing any dps.

Lastly, while PS->IT is generally a better rotation, IT->PS allows you to start damaging from further away (I generally get approx 1 GCD) again making the dps loss from movement decreased. And from further away than that you could start with a DC if you have enough RP.

So, napkin math:

If average among all important fights is 10% movement (IMO, extremely high), and are broken up on a 10s per 100s basis (ballparked for easy math), then actual time out of dps is 8.5s (since you get approx 1 extra GCD by using IT as you approach). However, note that this 1.5s you're gaining cannot do white damage or get procs/effects therefrom, so it is reduced dps. Let's call it 50%, since I think that's too low. For math purposes, 50% dps for 1.5s is equal to 100% dps for .75s.

So, for 100s, you're doing 90.75s worth of dps, and 9.25s of movement. Some of this is going to be waiting. ie. if Heigan is on the platform, you CAN count time to get back to him after it's over, but CAN'T count time when he's just sitting there. Let's assume, again, approximately half, or 5s in this silly example. Again, I think that's being generous to IUP.

So out of 100s, 5s you simply can't do anything with. 95s you're active, 90.75s you're dpsing, and 4.25s you're moving, unable to dps, and having a movement buff would allow you to dps sooner. Time spent dpsing over total time where you COULD be dpsing = 90.75/95 = 95.5% of the time.

15% movement speed buff would shorten 4.25s into 4.25/1.15 = 3.7s. Thus, 91.3s would be dpsing. 91.3/95 = 96.1% of the time.

Thus, with all of these admittedly large assumptions, 2 pts in IUP is worth approx .6% dps. That's .3% dps per point.

IMO, I have used numbers that are fair but give benefit of the doubt to IUP. I don't really think that 10s out of 100s is spent moving, and I don't really think that half of time spent moving even could be used for dps. Adjusting these downward would make IUP worth even less. Realistically, most fights are either "movement" or "tank and spank" fights. On the latter, IUP is clearly inferior, while on the former, most movement really can't be used for DPS and it's only a short window for each movement period that can.

Clearly there are situations where IUP is a big boost. The question is whether it's worth spending the points in IUP to get dmg boosts on those fights vs the penalty on other fights.

If I am wrong with my assumptions (since I'm pretty sure the math itself is right), please point out examples, and I'll be happy to stand corrected and edit this post accordingly. Everything I can think of (Sapph, Heigan, Kel'Thuzad, AR, Malygos) points to the numbers being worse for IUP than I've shown because either you can dps while you move or you couldn't be dpsing anyway. Or else the fights don't require any movement at all.

FWIW, Unholy Aura made sense because it worked on the whole raid and that .3% was multiplied by the number of ppl who needed to move (usually just melee dps, but in a raid, that's not trivial). The nerf has made this skill worth far less than most other choices.

EDIT: It appears that people are seeing a lot of movement in Ulduar, which I have not personally cleared, yet. It may be that Ulduar makes better use of IUP than other instances. If you're trying to decide whether or not to use it specifically for Ulduar, simply figure out what numbers you think are accurate, and plug them in, above. Should be pretty easy.

 

Tanoooki

Same spec, and was able to put out 2.9-3.1k on heroic test dummies. Havn't had time to test it in a raid yet execpt Sarth where i made 5.2k. I only have this screenshot to show.
Anyway, im using the rotation which has been mentioned 20 times, on each page and no, im not BiS.

 

Teyrocar

You mention the 15% speed increase, but what about the 10% faster rune cooldowns?

 

Miracleknight

That only applies to Unholy presence, which still doesn't do enough to make up for the loss of 15% damage on everything from blood presence.

So I'm inclined to go ahead and agree that IUP is completely up to the user. It provides the ability to get out of harms way faster, increases DPS on some fights but not all, the last thing to compare honestly is 1 talent point there vs the foot enchant to decide if maybe you should at least have the one point there and get a different boot enchant.

But I would certainly downgrade IUP from the mandatory talent (Though I've already made mention of that) to personal choice for the reasons stated.

 

Alde5

Sorry if this was already covered, I'm at work and can't spend too much time reading old posts. It seems to be the general consensus that for 0/10/61 the best glyphs are:

• Glyph of the ghoul
• Glyph of Dark Death
• Glyph of Scourge Strike

wouldn't it be better to replace glyph of SS with Glyph of Unholy Blight, since the duration of diseases has been upped in 3.1? It seems like you would get more use out of this since glyph of SS is unreliable.

 

Pyhrrus

I was thinking that on the first page it might be nice to give a set of suggestions for people who don't want to follow the straight cookie-cutter builds. For instance, you might say:

"For most cases, BCB > Necrosis > DarkConv > Morbidity > IUP"

which is what I believe I have gathered from other posts, as well as my own testing. This leaves the person free to deviate from the cookie-cutters without having to do a lot of retesting of things we've already come up with. It also allows them to change it around simply if they value one thing more than some of the rest of us (ie. if they use DnD a lot, Morbidity's value goes up). And for what it's worth, the cookie-cutters posted already violate this list and are probably not optimal.

I'd also like to know where Impurity falls on the above list (I think between BCB & Necrosis?) but I haven't done enough testing yet, haven't seen discussion since 3.1, and am pretty sure I should take it regardless, even with the nerf.

I suppose we could also extend the above list to things like Black Ice and Bladed Armor, but that's less useful because you'd also have to consider the points "wasted" in the talents above them, plus the value of the ones next to them (2H spec is great!) PLUS the fact that they scale differently. Black Ice is better when you do more Shadow (ie. weapon for SS) dmg, Bladed Armor basically doesn't scale (only with more Armor).

On a separate note, I tried out some tests without Reaping and some using pure SS with no PS-IT refresh just to make sure that previous discussions were still valid. They are.

 

teiglin

The short answer is no, not even close.

Glyph of Unholy Blight is worth one DC every minute. Glyph of SS changes some number of IT+PS into SS. Pre-patch I'd have ballparked it at two extra SS per minute. Each SS is much more damage, 5 extra RP (as long as you're using 4t7, which you are), and an extra GCD (usually doesn't matter) over IT+PS. With longer diseases, you're even less likely to have to refresh them manually, while the additional 3s would not change your cycle at all without the SS glyph since you'd still have to refresh every 20s cycle.

My understanding is that if, for some reason, you drop 4t7, then UB glyph is better than Dark Death (but still won't even approach SS).

 

Derivel

Pyhrrus: The one thing that is difficult to quantify with movement speed is the "getting out of the fire factor." For instance, you say that movement speed is useless on Sapphiron, but I have had at least 3 encounters where all the iceblocks were far away from me and unholy aura saved my arse getting there. Of course in that situation I could turn on unholy presence since there is no need to DPS, but my point is that movement speed can be very valuable for keeping you alive.

Of course I haven't gotten to get very far in Ulduar to see what the AOE is like, but at least until I get the hang of the fights I will keep IUP to help with my reaction time if I get targeted for some ground effect as much as for getting back to the boss to DPS. It is very possible that once those things are well known, however, I can get away with less movement speed and still be almost as effective.

 

Pyhrrus

Well, just to give you some numbers, my SS averages about 5800, my PS does 2350, and my IT 1800. That's including crits, and with a 12/0/59 build. Obviously a 0/10/61 would be different, as would someone with BiS gear, but I think it would still be close enough for this argument to apply.

So for every time you have to manually refresh, you're losing approximately (5800 - (2350 + 1800)) = 1450 dmg, PLUS a separate GCD. If the SS Glyph makes it so you have to do that only 18% of the time ((1-.25)^6), that's fairly valuable. If without SS you do this once per 20s rotation, that's 3x per minute, or 4350 dpm loss without sigil vs 4350*.18 = 780 dpm loss with it. Comparing the two: 3570 dpm gained by having SS glyph.
Minor note: This assumes an 18% every 20s rotation. In reality, with SS glyph, rotation is longer, AND effectively "restarts" for purposes of this discussion not every 20s, but every time diseases refresh. I'd guess 18% is high, making SS better than this, though maybe not by far.

The option you're suggesting means that you have to refresh UB less often, allowing more DCs. UB was taking 1 DC slot per 20s, and with the glyph it would be 1 per 30s. Using the LCM, before UB took 3 DCs, with glyph UB takes 2 DCs. That's 1 extra DC per minute. My DCs are hitting for 3300 (already adjusted for Dark Death, which I don't have, and using only 1 Morbidity, which I don't especially like), so that's an extra 3300 dpm with the UB glyph.

So obviously they're close, especially if you're a Morbidity fan. If you're going 0/10/61, as you say, you also get a bonus from Black Ice, which I don't. So I'd say it depends on what you're speccing for. If you're speccing for DCs (Morbidity, Black Ice, hopefully with 4 t7), you're probably right (though then you're also losing 5 RP on the SS vs PS-IT conversion). If not (I only have 2 t7, for instance), SS is the better choice. Also, with numbers this close, YMMV.

Honestly, I didn't expect things were this close (<5 dps with above numbers). It's probably a matter of personal preference if you're already speccing for DCs. I'd personally be inclined toward UB just so I don't have to deal with refreshing it as often OR with watching the diseases to know when to manually refresh.

As for whether it's better than Dark Death, that would only ever be true if 15% dmg to DC is less than 1 extra DC per minute. Since 100/15 = 6.67, 7 DCs per minute or more would mean DD is better, 6 or less would mean UB is better. SS rotation gives MINIMALLY 3 DCs per 20s, so 9 DCs per minute, with 3 of those being replaced by UBs. If you're right on this line, or are using an AoE rotation, maybe UB is on par, but most of the time DD is better.

@Derivel: you're right of course. I was only counting pure DPS in my post, and survival is a very important part of DPS. I don't personally consider the 15% to be that useful even in survival, but as always, YMMV.

 

Drenhar

I'm sorry i meant 12/0/59. I had just woken up when I wrote that haha.

I'm just trying to eek out as much damage as i possibly can at the moment. I was just hoping someone with a firmer grasp on math than myself (i.e. i suck at math); could tell me if using the dark death glyph and taking out the points in morbidity and tossing them into necrosis would garner better results, seeing as melee is 22% of my damage atm.

(By the way, anyone else's talents glitched? I have a total of 69 talent points, and unholy blight and SS are greyed out in the talent pane. I can still use both though. Kinda odd).

 

Gumibear

That bug is popping up for non-mana users who don't show lower ranks of abilities in their spell books. It has something to do with the talent tree ability being rank 1 while the ability you relearn is a higher rank.

 

Pyhrrus

For 12/0/59, yes, Necrosis > Morbidity. It's only when you've got Black Ice, t7 gear, the Glyph of Dark Death and all of that together that they synergize enough with Morbidity to even make it close, AFAIK. I'm running the same spec as you and am 100% positive that Necrosis > Morbidity, and significantly so, point for point.

The Glyph of Dark Death is actually better when you ARE using Morbidity, though, not as a replacement, though, of course, it still works then.

And yes, I also have that bug. Doesn't seem to affect anything other than make us worried.

 

Klasp

Here are some attempts from yesterdays Ulduar 25 man:

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

Overall, I think the DPS is in a good spot compared to other classes, as our raid normally doesn't have so much downs- and I'm still getting use to the spec -Capping RP a couple times during fight, not 100% UB uptime, etc-

From what I've seen so far- IUP is almost a no brainer. You should have it, and that's that, there has been so much movement thus far and the bosses that I remember from PTR there is even more movement - miri/hodir

 

Drenhar

Awesome, thank you for the responses.

I spent 4 hours last night waiting on my GM ticket and got no response. I really didn't want to go back into the queue again today lol.