There's lots of boss fights with multiple mobs too and UB hits over 20 seconds as hard as a death coil crit. So keep UB up (Except in fights where you move a lot, if you're not going to be hitting anything with UB for a while then it's not really worth it) and I like to get through my trash as fast as possible, so yes it's useful (Also 20 seconds of an aoe trash fight = UB's up time :P ). And as it's been stated whenever there becomes a reason to drop the T7 4 piece, Glyph of UB will take precedent over Dark Death.

After running a couple times in 10 man ulduar I'm considering switching to 0/10/61.. I'm still struggling with getting ghoul frenzy up and keeping a solid rotation.. I realize it's been explained before and it's possible I just fail at comprehending the rotation now that there's an extra two gcd's involved, but can someone help me out with managing this rotation.. I find myself with a UH/Frost rune and blood rune after a blood tap/GF.. So my biggest concern is getting back to the 5k dps that I had before these changes as unholy..


Currently I have that macro I use to help remind me that a GF / Blood tap is near.. I guess my main problem is finding the right time to get myself ready to activate it.

Try adding cancelaura Bloodtap to the macro..and use it after you use your death rune scourge strike. It is still awkward to keep up in my opinion, and I usually end up being more fluid just not using it. Guess it just takes practice.
edit: If anyone has a better time to use it please enlighten me.

Sigil of the Vengeful Heart > Sigil of Awareness as a 0/10/61?

Has anyone done the math? Just curious, i tried a search, nothing came up.

For myself, Ghoul Frenzy hasn't really been much of an issue. I had been trying out blood for a couple of weeks before the patch, though, and am still trying to get used to Unholy again. For me, the nice, thought out rotation that everyone's using boils down to a prioritized list, rather than a rotation:

1. Raise your Ghoul.
2. Pop Ghoul Frenzy macro you have listed (1x per 30s).
3. If they're not up, use PS & IT to disease target.
4. Use SS.
5. IF (RP near cap)(UB or DC).
6. Use BS.
7. Pop trinkets.
8. IF (long fight)(Bring out Gargoyle).
9. Use UB.
10. Use DC.
11. Refresh Bone Armor.
12. Refresh HoW.

I simply follow this list for every action, saying "can I do this, yet?" and if not, going down to the next. Since Ghoul is usually alive, and GF doesn't happen often, it basically looks just like the standard rotation. But instead of getting caught up in "where do I put GF in the rotation", I simply replace the next available SS with it. It also means my "rotation" is NOT 20 seconds, and effectively restarts whenever the SS refreshes the diseases, but with the caveat that sometimes I have to BS twice instead of SSing, and it's not in a "standard" place in the rotation. Also, note that many of these can and should be done outside of combat -- consider it to always be in effect, but you can't use most of these abilities without being in melee range, so you'd move past those on the list.

I do NOT claim that this is optimal -- remember, I'm still getting used to the tree again. But I will say that it's been working pretty well. Consistently over 3k in 10man Naxx on my first night with this spec (and I still have pre-Naxx 25 gear including Titansteel Destroyer), and vying for top DPS with a couple of others.

Anyone else think a prioritized list makes more sense to them than a rotation, especially when the rotation is as simple as SS,BS,BS,SS,RD,SS,SS,SS,RD? Obviously, the order could probably stand tweaking, but the concept seems to make sense when ppl are trying to figure out stuff that's not part of the normal rotation, such as GF.

This seems obvious to me. When UB does = dmg to DC vs. single target when considered over a long time, UB is always the right choice, since adds frequently occur. When the fight is almost over, however, UB won't do its full damage, and can be replaced by DC. But since by the nature of this argument, the fight has already been won, you don't really have to keep that in mind... prioritizing UB over DC ALWAYS will yield almost exactly the same total DPS.

Removing UB will hurt your DPS, I am sure, though exactly how much depends on how often you get adds.

I'm curious about this as well. I passed on it 2 nights ago but now I'm really starting to think I made a really stupid decision.

Well, VH adds 380 to DC, vs Awareness giving 189 to SS (ignoring stuff we don't care about in this spec).

Since DC has a base of 443, adding 380 is adding 86%, yes? To find out how much overall benefit this would be, find your current DC percentage and multiply by .86. That's your total DPS gain.

SS dmg depends on weapon and set, so it's difficult to say how much benefit the 189 gives. It's probably more useful for those of us with worse gear. But if you're trying to compare, you've probably already got the Awareness, right? So try comparing your SS with it on and your SS with it off. Remember not to compare total percentages each time with the percentage from above, though... instead, figure out SS DPS in each case and make a percentage from that to compare with the above. In fact, to be accurate, the DC test above should be without the Awareness, too.

Then just see which is bigger.

Obviously, VH will be comparatively better when specced 0/10/61 than, say, 12/0/59, and also better with Glyph of Dark Death, and 3/3 Morbidity. Even with all of that, though, I'd still need to do the above operation in order to tell.

EDIT: If you prefer quick napkin math to the real stuff, take a look at the bigger picture. 380 is approx 2x 189, yes? So if SS gain from Awareness is 1/2 of DC gain with VH, then if the number of SSs you're doing is more than 2x the number of DCs, you'll gain more from Awareness. If less than 2x, you'll gain more from VH. That's a lot easier to calculate, but less accurate due to the many other effects, of course.

I don't know if anyone else has gotten the Sigil of the Vengeful Heart yet or not, but I'm 12/0/59 and I've gotten an apparent increase in DPS since I picked it up and used it over Sigil of Awareness. I'm getting DC crits as high as 9.1k; full raid buffs, of course. Without I'm getting 5.8k-ish crits. Our other DPS DK is in almost (without new sigil ofc) the exact same gear as me, and is of similar skill/spec. I was able to maintain a significant DPS lead on him for the entire fight.

I was able to maintain 5.1k dps without cooldowns on Ignis. I obviously spiked much higher during the BL / BloodFury / garg burst.

I also did this while dropping UB from my rotation. I also prioritized DC's so as to not waste any RP. I am considering trying out 0/10/61 tonight and I'll make sure to have a wowmeter / WWS parse for that one.

I'll try out the sigil when the glyphs for blood / unholy become available.

Yep, as Unholy. I was also under the impression the 'pure' DPS classes would once again rule for the vast majority of the time, but have been pleased to see DK DPS remain so high.

I never agreed with the sentiment anyway - if a hybrid specs full PVE DPS to the point they're nigh on useless in any other role, then why shouldn't they be able to equal pure DPS specs?

Anyway, I don't have WWS of last night's raid, but I was analysing my Recount stats...

SS is obviously top, with melee coming in second - nice to see the benefit of haste coming through.

What surprised me was that wandering plague and necrosis were each an equal 4% of my DPS, on an essentially single target mob (I was on boss almost 100%).

Math doesn't support this when you plan to use UB and Gargoyle:

DC per 20 seconds (with T7 4p) = ~2.8
SS per 20 seconds (with SS Glyph) = ~4.28

DC avg damage in naxxish gear + Sigil = ~5312
DC avg damage in naxxish gear = ~4267
SS avg damage in naxxish gear + Sigil = ~6533
SS avg damage in naxxish gear = ~5739

Sigil of VH = 5312 *2.8 + 5739 *4.28 = 14873.6+24562.92
Sigil of VH = 39436.52

Sigil of Awareness = 4267* 2.8 + 6533 *4.28 = 11947.6+ 27961.24
Sigil of Awareness = 39908.84

Difference = ~23 DPS in favor of Awareness WITH T7
(T8 = no contest and Awareness wins by far)

I'm loving the theme for Unholy gearing up this raid season.

Edit: In before anyone tries to suggest that UB is less Dmg per RP with the new sigil. I have not found any combination of gear and glyphs/sigils that would make this true. If you think you know a combo that would work please let me know with supporting math/theory if you can.

Edit2:However, instead of skipping UB you can use the UB Glyph INSTEAD of SS Glyph to have an on par reason to use the new Sigil of VH. Whether that would be a total DPS increase is still to be determined.

nvm. hooray for patch day.

Currently armory and your talent page has a bug where it does not display when you have a point in SS or UB.

Is this linked to the missing talent point bug? Those are the ones that keep disappearing on me, just UB and SS. Makes sense, I guess. Now I almost feel bad for yelling at him. Looking at my own armory, it's all messed up. I've never had GF, and I logged out as a tank last night...

Is anyone else noticing some serious issues with Gargoyle, perhaps only as it pertains to XT-002? Doing it last night, my standard strategy was to save Gargoyle for the 25% heart, when we blew Bloodlust. In looking at a World of Logs breakdown from last night, on our kill, the Gargoyle's breakdown looked like this:

Melee 9416 53.5 % 7 1345.1
Gargoyle Strike 8180 46.5 % 3 2726.7

Meaning he meleed 7 times for 9416 damage total (no crits), and used Gargoyle Strike a whopping 3 times for 8180 damage total (also no crits). I don't think it's just Gargoyle Strikes being incorrectly recorded as melee swings, because the damage difference is pretty substantial.

Looking at other attempts, some of them were even worse. A couple wipes, the Gargoyle didn't use Gargoyle Strike at all. Other times he used it once while meleeing 8 times, etc.

I'm wondering if this is an issue with the Heart's hitbox. Once he'd freeze up before ejecting his Heart, I'd run around to the tank spot to be in position for it, and as soon as the Heart was targettable I could swing at it, even when it was still falling down towards us. My guess is that even though the Gargoyle is flying up above, he's still within swing range of the Heart, and for some wacky reason the thing's AI decides that meleeing would be a great idea.

I have no idea if this is unique to XT-002, or if it's happening elsewhere as well, as we only spent time on FL and XT last night. Either way, it's pretty frustrating, because meanwhile the Blood DKs in the raid were getting 60-80k damage total out of their unglyphed DRWs, and I'm getting a whopping 17.5k out of my 51 point talent. :P

Thoughts?

Maybe it's meleeing cause it's just next to the heart in the air when he spawns? Dunno, just guessing

I'm seeing the same thing out of my gargoyle on that fight. Doesn't make me particularly happy to see 75 melee swings and 47 gargoyle strikes across all of our attempts (WWS bugged and grouped every attempt together for us. :S) I can only imagine it has to do with the hit box being up near her, but I don't know enough about her mechanics to cite this being the actual reason. I'll keep an eye on her when we go to fight next. I wish I had logs of a different fight I pulled her out in.

Thanks Methods, and everyone else for all the input and math. There's something I'd like to point out about Necrosis that might effect it's argument vs Dark Conviction as well as share a long real parse with everyone.

So it looks like a lot of the math is done with logs of the recount pane. I don't know if it's intended or overlooked, but what stats/talents also affect the pet(s)? The recount pane once you click on it doesn't show pets. If your crit chance (Dark Conviction) affects your pets, I think it has been very slightly undervalued when comparing it to Necrosis.

Here is a WMO of my Ignis fight: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
It's a 6:39 parse. I had a >99% DPS time only on the boss and never got picked up by Ignis. The duration and relative consistency of this boss might make it our main single-target benchmarking fight in Ulduar.

Spec: 0/10/61
My actual DPS was 5725 over 6:39
My pets accounted for 20.1% of my damage. 20.1%! That's more than melee dmg, and barely under Scourge Strike.

Necrosis did 2.5% of my overall damage (granted it's 4/5)
2.58%/4 = .645% per point.
I've seen it valued as high as .8 in other posts, which is a .81% DPS error, or 46.37 DPS error in my parse's case.

Bandit's Insignia proc was .95% of overall dmg, or 54.39 DPS

Other noteworthy tidbits:
BCB is 2.5% of overall, or .83333% per talent point
Wandering Plague is 1.85%, or .6167% per talent point (single target)

Also, 0/10/61 seemed to outperform 12/0/59 in most of the trash/bosses I tried it in. 0/10/61 was also easier to play due to the extra runic power space and the run speed. (Not that either is very hard) I should have more parses on the specs within the next week.

Eh, it's a full 1.33% over the softcap. That's a lot.

I don't know what your Blood DK's were doing different from me but my DRW was having issues with attacking the heart. Looking back at the WMO between our Council kill and our Deconstructor kill the difference in DRW damage is pretty sizable. In our Deconstructor kill in three uses of DRW it only auto attacked a total of 9 times. Compare this to Council where in the same number of uses it auto attack 19 times. Our DPS several times reported problems with hitting the heart even when sitting on top of it, so I'd venture a guess that the problem has to do with the way targeting/range works on it and not to do with the functionality of the Gargoyle.

Would taking Icy Talons over Necrosis be more effective if there is no Frost DK/Enh Sham in the raid?

I'd think so, because Necrosis doesn't get affected by any talents now...so its a strict 20% of your white dmg.
And Icy Talons makes you do 20% more white damage, so that makes them just about equal. Now take into consideration the fact that your pets get affected by Icy Talons, would that not make it a better choice for your talent points?

(would splitting the points 3 and 2 be more effective since they'd scale with each other?)

Pretty sure cap is 9% now.

in addition, 8% was never a "soft cap," it was just a cap for all non-DW purposes.

Have you tried summoning a gargoyle after the heart is attackable? I know the melee having trouble attacking is a bug similar to the old Malygos one from when he was targetable, but not attackable in phase 3. You used to have to drop target and retarget when he became active or their was a chance some abilities would not work. I always get the same issue in the Brunhildar Village doing the daily when you have to duel them to the death.

So try dropping target and then retargeting when the heart comes out.