Any source for the 9% cap? I've seen 0 misses on all fights I dps on, with 267 hit rating, which is 8.14% melee hit, according to character sheet. 8% is the "soft cap" in that it is the cap for melee special attacks and 2h white swings. It does not cap spells, which is why it is not a "hard cap".

There are good threads in both the Rogue and Hunter forums with extensive evidence that the 2H/special/ranged hit cap has been 8% since wotlk release.

The spell hit cap is 17%, which has the fortuitous value of being 263 hit rating + virulence + misery + draenei. Obviously you need more to cap your spells if you're horde or lack sufficient goats in your raid (~299 rating).

This is incorrect. The hit cap has been 8% since WotLK release. And I referred to it as a softcap because you can still gain benefit from the stat up to 17% before spells are capped, dual-wield or not. It's just not worth bothering with past 8% in real terms.

Tried 0/10/61 today, and i found new necrosis pretty disappointing (%2-2.5) of my dps and i was sometimes having troubles with threat. I decided to put points in subversion and looked around if i could shave more talents from unholy to go into 2h weapon spec to somewhat compensate the loss of necrosis. Removed necrosis, IUP and came up with a spec like 7/10/54
Since roughly %60+ of non-pet damage is 2h attacks (ss, swing, bs, ps) i thought 2h talent would be around the same lines with necrosis (plus little rp5 from butchery and -%25 threat). I'm yet to test it in a raid enviroment but damage output looks pretty much the same in my tests. Havent yet gone further ulduar so i'm not really sure if iup is a talent something i would mourn for.

We're (read: players in my guild) were getting misses on hits and specials under 9% hit in Ulduar, so we are useing 9% now.

I'm not here telling you that something has changed, or why it is, but I can tell you that if you armory some of the top guilds in Ulduar, their melee are sporting 9% hit.

Most melees are currently over what they'd usually go for because of Grim Toll suddenly becoming awesome, including myself. I didn't have any misses when I was below 9& hit with draenei aura either.

This simply isn't true. I have a WWS report of several Ulduar boss attempts done at 268 hit (a little over 8% hit), and the only actual misses that occur are from spells. If you take the time to pull open the extra columns and check number of misses/dodges/parries/etc, you will only see parries and 'others' (evades and whatnot) reported for melee attacks. This is a pretty large sample size, and there's no reason for Blizzard to suddenly change this.

http://wowwebstats.com/dnuqap2d3rzds?a=x300000002ed1fc3

Ok i switched from a 10/61 build to a 12/0/59 build and as i promised 2 pages ago tried to play without improved unholy presence.

We did Mimiron (and wiped... a lot ... he's tough), anyway its a fight involving quite a bit of movement throughout the fight. But i never had any problems.

To be honest, i didn't even notice I lost the speed boost until i checked out my talents halfway through the evening, which gave me a reminder.

If improved unholy presence isn't worth it dps wise, i think we can drop it from a survival point of view as well.

The point however is that, the alternatives aren't that much better. Necrosis is pretty terribad now, throughout the evening it did 2% of my dps, which for 3 points is about 0.66% dps per point, which isn't something to cheer about (prepatch it was more than 1% per point).

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Between the 2 specs, i personally didn't see a huge difference, as expected. I personally prefered the 10/61 build more, because the 30 extra runic power especially combined with the 4xT7 gives you that extra room to dump your runes as fast as possible without overcapping RP.

I had no aggro issues whatsoever with either 10/61 or 12/0/59, but we have a MT (which also is the guild leader) that really knows how to play.

As for a spec, i'm really trying to come up with some alternatives. Since we don't have an enh shaman, mainly do 10 mans and the DK tank is often blood. I have been considering going for Icy Talons with a 15/56 spec.
If only Icy Talons stacked with the improved version this would be so much easier

PS. Very sorry for always forgetting to capitalize the "I"', in my country its a bad thing to capitalize Personal Pronouns

On a different subject, I see a lot of people here forcing themselves to use Ghoul Frenzy every 30 seconds.

I personally found it a lot easier to restrict Ghoul Frenzy for tactical use. I see it as a heal with extra benefit. I use ghoul frenzy before we engage the boss, when there is a dead moment in the fight. Whenever i have to run away from the boss for whatever reason.

But i never use Ghoul Frenzy in the middle of my rotation, unless i have Blood Tap up.

I'm actually pretty sure that you wouldn't gain so much if you used ghoul frenzy in the middle of a rotation. My previous calculations where a bit too much in favor of ghoul frenzy and also didn't use the 3.1 numbers.

An example how i used ghoul frenzy on the Mimiron fight:

- When we run in and get through the speech i trigger GF as soon as he jumps in his tank, that gives the rune about 5 seconds to recharge before the actual fight starts. Since i can just start with PS>IT>BS>BS by the time i get to the other UF combo for a SS the rune is up again.

- In phase 1 you often have to run out of melee to avoid a 1 shotting AoE, if you got some good ghoul control you can save your ghoul each time (took some practice for me but i got it nailed in the end). I often try to pop ghoul frenzy as im running away, so that when i get back i can restart my rotation and hardly get any disadvantage from the single unholy rune used.

- Before phase 2, when he jumps to the next vehicle i pop ghoul frenzy again, again no dps loss at all since the rune is back up when i need it.

- In phase 2 the ghoul sometimes gets targeted for a laser barrage too, healers seriously didn't have time to heal pets, so I used ghoul frenzy to keep him up. Quite successfully I might add.

- I was soaking up bombs in phase 3 (you have got to love IBF and AMS), so I didn't really use my ghoul a lot here. I generally just put it on an assault bot to help out the dpsers.

- We didn't get that far yet in phase 4, so can't say much here. But the heal probably proves useful.

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All im trying to say here is that people should see ghoul frenzy for its value. It really shines when you can use it without losing out due to the rune cost (due to the start of the fight, a pause or blood tap), or as a decent ghoul heal.
I doubt, considering all factors (RP / Glyph / Damage) that using it instead of a SS will be a dps gain.

keep it for yogg-saron

About IUP, even with the movement in most fights in Ulduar its not really that needed no, or well, you wont feel the difference to put it in better words. But for Yoggi, where you run 50% of the time (it feels like that atleast) its gold. Crushed other melee on the fight, and Im pretty sure IUP helped a lot with that.

And about GF, I agree with Foxx here. 1 pt instead of 1 pt in Necrosis is worth it. There are dead periods in some fights which its a dps gain aswell as pre engaging bosses. However its just on 1 fight in Ulduar where I need to use it to heal my ghoul, raid heals usually saves it. Spaming GF to build up 100 rp pretty fast isnt bad either

I agree, IUP isn't needed. When you move, you usually follow mobs which follow the tank thus hindering their movement speed. Or there is simply nothing to beat on while running around. At least this is my experience from our first clear run. I'll give this version of 0/10/61 a try next week.

What if Instead of 3 points in Necrosis they'd go for Annhiliation? +3% crit sounds tasty.

I have trouble seeing 3pts used for 3% crit to melee special abilities being worth it over Necrosis.

See the earlier discussions on Dark Conviction. +1% crit is approx +.6% dps. Necrosis is approx .8% dps.

Obviously, however, Annihilation's usefulness goes up if you're attempting an Obit build. But unless you're rearranging quite a lot, that has been shown to be a dps decrease also.

It's probably also worth reading the annihilation talent, as the +crit only applies to melee special abilities. For unholy, this means SS, PS, and BS only, so something like a third of your damage.

As far as ghoul frenzy goes, I am far from best in slot but I took the time to let the ghoul wack a boss target dummy for a couple minutes until the dps evened out. I kept horn of winter up the whole time:

282 DPS with frenzy up the whole time and 45% damage was melee, rest claw
263 dps no frenzy the whole time and 39% damage was melee, rest claw

Thats a 19 dps increase for 1 point. I can dish out about 2.2k dps on the dummy, so for me thats less than 1% increase in dps, and it plays havoc with my rotation. I personally will be using it as a survival tool for the ghoul: dead ghouls do 0 dps. Since the ghoul scales with strength, those with better gear may get more out of it. I suspect the claw/melee ratio won't change much though.

It is drastically different when all raid buffs and debuffs are present. On average, my Ghoul will do 15% of my total damage. 10% as a normal swing, 5% as claw. This is with the full array of buff/debuffs and the best gear WotLK had to offer before 3.1.

In terms of a DPS increase, I'm not convinced that it's actually any better than putting an extra point in Necrosis/BCB. Even using it as Foxx mentions above, only using it during times when you wouldn't be able to use the rune anyway, a constant passive effect is most likely more beneficial.

Personally I don't see the heal making a difference. The Watchers, The General, Snoop Yogg, and Algalon may prove me wrong. Thinking in a broad sense, I find my pet is either kept up by normal heals and Night of the Dead, or I am doing something wrong that lets him be killed and requires better micro from me (moving him out of lava waves or shadow fissures, for example)

My guild is nearing the end of its first week in Ulduar and I've had alot of time to test the 12/0/59 spec in almost every fight. I can definitely say its much stronger than the frost variant with near BiS naxx gear as I was considerably much further ahead than when the other DK in my guild tried it out. Blood was the only competitive spec that I've gone up against so far but I still generally would come a few hundred DPS ahead of any DK using that spec as well. Possibly a skill difference though. I haven't had to run any others as my dual spec needs to be tank.

I want to add that Ulduar has a TON of movement fights. Nearly every fight I can think of involves almost constant stop and go dps. Unholy being as loose as it is lets you have some gap in your rotation and it performs very well on most of these fights.

I've been using the Dark Death glyph in my 3rd glyph spot and it's quite amazing. Fights like General Vexaz and Yogg get alot of benefit from it as you get a huge buff on General if you can stand in the Shadow crashes. They also make your glyphs reappear almost instantly if you can stand for a good while and scourge strike spam over and over for 15k on crits. VERY fun fight. Yogg with the 4 watchers up I was seeing 10k crits from just death coil.

I'm starting to doubt this OMG OMG t7>t8 stuff. Granted the RP boost is amazing but I think with a 4set t8 you're looking at huge gains to your Scourge Strike which is according to meters over 30% of my damage. Having that t8 4 set may offset the RP gains with shear monstorous Scourge strikes. Not to mention the 2 set bonus which will help with the death coils you do fire off.

I want to note with the massive amount of movement in most these fights I've been almost completely ignoring Unholy blight unless there is an AoE situation. It doesn't seem worth it when there is so many things to pay attention to and trying to stay in the mobs ass far enough to make sure its ticking.

Sorry for my random thoughts here but I'd just like to share my experiences as I have experience on nearly every Ulduar fight now. Here is a parse from Vezax if you'd like to pick the numbers apart.

General Vezax : Benihime

Stupid question: I've been eating Dragonfin Filet's under the assumption that we gain nothing from the SP on Fish Feasts, but now that I think about it there SHOULD be some benefit to our spells. Definitely not worth 1 AP, but would the SP on Fish Feast plus the AP make it better than Dragonfin Filets?

I doubt the 2 specs are that far apart, i've been getting very similar numbers.

You can not say that your spec is better because you did more dps than another DK that tested it out. He might be doing something different, or have more lag.
You can only really draw such a conclusion if you yourself use both specs. (And even then it stays a subjective conclusion).

Ulduar indeed as a ton of movement. As far as improved unholy presence goes, you don't exactly NEED it anywhere in ulduar though. However I very much doubt if, if you look at the talents in the bigger picture, there is much better to invest in. Im now using a 12/0/59 spec which has 3 points in necrosis (instead of 1) and 0 points in IUP, and frankly movement wise i hardly notice a difference, there are a few cases where the extra speed could be quite useful though. So I'm thinking about speccing back.

Unholy Blight is indeed less useful than in naxx, but not using it at all in ulduar is a waste. Unholy Blight is still the best RP dump as long as you can get the 30 seconds in. I think nearly every boss allows for that in ulduar, be it not constantly.
For the bosses i've done:
-Razorscale: great on adds, and he's on the ground for 20+ seconds so good on the dragon as well
- Deconstructor, no real question, semi-tank and spank fight
- Kologarn, useful you're more than 20 sec on a body part
- Auriaya, didnt do her myself, fear makes it hard though.
- Hodir, this is doubtful, you spend most time dpsing him. But you randomly have to run out, which probably makes DC superior
- Freya, useful
- Thorim, well this is mostly aoe, and at the end its a tank and spank. So better than DC i'd say.
- Mimiron, this is a dodgy one. In phase 1 its dodgy, in phase 2 its good, in phase 3 i was on soaking bomb damage, but if you aoe its good. In phase 4 its good because i think it damages all 3 parts.

We're personally on the General now, so can't really say how good it is there, but my guess is that its better to use DC.

The glyph made death coil a lot more potent, however back when unholy blight cost 60 RP it already was better damage per RP than deathcoil, so i doubt a 15% dmg increase makes a difference now.
I have to agree though that in a lot of fights its easier to focus on Death coils since you can't grantee you're in melee all the time.

You overestimate the T8 bonus, or you misunderstand what it does.
20% bonus on each part of the disease damage.
For scourge strike that is 11% per disease, increasing that with 20% gives 13.2% per disease.

That is a pretty nice bonus, but compared to an extra 10 RP (which equals 1-1.25 extra death coils each 20 second) i dont think it holds up, and methods sheets seem to confirm that.

Hello, I am currently using a variant of 0/10/61 with bis naxx gear. Up until 3.1 I was using 17/0/54, and I was always in blood presence. However, I assumed (apparently incorrectly) that with IUP it would be best to raid in unholy presence as it would seem that 10% faster rune cd would equate into a near 10% damage increase.

Now, movement speed aside, why is the faster rune cd not important? I know that there was some sort of 8.5 second cd on runes if you use it immediately or something but I have to admit the finer details escape me. I raided the first week of Ulduar 25 in unholy presence and topped our meters against equally geared and (I hope) competent people.

I get the fact that 15% dmg increase in blood presence is easily greater than 15% attack speed as we have dead time. However, the 10% faster rune cd has to count for something no?