Uglie

Hey Erekose,

You have an addon that shows you how much time you have left on a certain proc, what addon is that? I hate trying to look at the blizzard UI at the top right to see it, its so small.

 

Travaggie

With the addition of dual spec, and the ability to have different spells for both specs I would definitely not recomend macroing Rune Strike to anything in your DPS set. You can simply set up additional macros very quickly for your tank spec that include Rune Strike. If you pull agro on trash the last thing you want to do is generate more threat, and you'll get way more bang for your buck out of a FS for that RP than the Rune Strike so damage isn't an issue. For offtanking and tanking, yes Rune Strike macro to everything.

 

Arokh

I would bet my money on this addon being "Proculas"

 

Erekose

It's actually called TellMeWhen, not Proculas. Money prz!

I use it to track all of my diseases, tanking CD lengths (for overlapping), and DPS buffs (Greatness, Pyrite Infusion, Unholy Strength, Killing Machine).

When in Config mode right click an empty icon, give it the name Killing Machine, enable the checks for timer and make sure its set as a buff on the player. Adjust accordingly, PM me if you have problems setting it up.

 

wizkhalifa

i use tellmewhen as well.
when 3.1 came out TMW was acting up and showing my FF and BP durations when other players cast them even when i had the option checked for only show when cast by player. so i had no idea if i had MY FF or BP up. So i started using Runewatch to keep track and that worked well. Now i use Magic but i dont really like to have the durations on the bottom, too much clutter.

i remember trying one more time and it was still acting up. Then i thought to myself, If another player casts FF and BP, does that multiply my damage? or only the diseases cast by myself?

sometimes i see 3-4 FF on a target and was wondering.

 

Daedalix

Damage is only affected by diseases cast by yourself.

I use TellmeWhen for procs but use NeedtoKnow for disease durations.

Stay thirsty my friends.

 

drnkn

Classtimer is nice. (specially with the custombuffs)

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/5816/classtimer.jpg

yeah, its unholy, but classtimer shows for example "killing machine", too.

 

Valtiel

Pardon me, but isn't it dps inefficient to drain 20 RP that could go for 60% of a FS on that?

As a dpser, you should have RS keybinded but not macro'ed. You have little control over trashing 20 RP into a minimal dps upgrade, and since 90% of your RS proccs will come from overaggro, RS won't exactly help there.

12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.

 

wizkhalifa

when tanking.

 

Erekose

I don't really want to get into an extended argument over this silly thing as its incredibly minor, but in the interest of the debate I'll digress a little bit. DK threat is incredibly low, if I pull aggro I must really be trying to do so...and if its vs a boss I'm probably dead.

Just looking at a random parse from Ulduar, we killed Freya/Thorim/GV and 2 Yogg attempts with 12 combined pulls. In that entire time I used 42 Rune Strikes (compared to the almost 2,000 Frost Strikes), which means I sacrified 26.25 FS for off-the-GCD extra damage to AoE pack mobs only. On the only single target fight (GV) I used no Rune Strikes. Interestingly I used no RS on any of the trash.

I'm not going to get up on a soapbox and tell everyone that you need to macro RS into every ability in order to do DPS well; that's just silly. However, I don't know about the rest of you but I Tank and PvP and in those situations RS is quite useful indeed...and the impact of having RS macro'd to everything on my DPS is very minor and in AoE sitautions (Freya, Thorim especially) I have more RP than I know what to do with due to the HB COTG bug, which is I assume where the majority of those RS are coming from, so the siphon of 20 RP can at times be beneficial (especially for the RP rich ITx6 combined with external RP sources). For Freya and Thorim both....by the time you're actually on the boss, your sources of RS are gone. RS would indeed be a significant RP drain DPS loss...if it happened on the actual boss, which it does not seem to.

It's just not worth it to me to have 2-3 different sets of macros (especially considering I have all of 2 free macro slots left) for all of my strikes/abilities where I can just keep the same ones and have it not adversely affect my performance in PvP/DPS/Tanking. Your mileage may vary; some may just feel more comfortable with keybinding RS but as its off the GCD I find the macroing to be very efficient for my uses. Your mileage may vary.

As an example here is my OB macro, the script crap is just error suppression. At the very least I heartily recommend appending /startattack to every single one of your abilities so that you can tab target and spam abilities without losing auto-attack time.

#showtooltip Obliterate
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE")
/cast Rune Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE")
/cast Obliterate
/startattack

 

Valtiel

Since you used no RS on trash, and since you killed/attempted 3 bosses (as you had no RS on Vezaxx), you've had around 15 RS per boss, which is around 300 RP lost per collective bossfight. Hard to calculate the dps loss, but considering the goal of these boards is to obtain maximized performance in the role relative to the thread, suggesting (like you did) to macro RS in every move is a step away from dps optimization. Minor or silly, it's your personal judgement and everyone will respect your choice, but it's objectively a dps loss.

12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.

 

Daedalix

The only thing I have Rune Strike bound to is Blood Boil (along with Frost Strike) for AoE situations (Freya's adds, trash). I find that I rarely have time to rune dump in my AoE rotation so the RS doesn't detract from my RP generation. I'm almost always full up on RP when AoEing.

Stay thirsty my friends.

 

Taizu

KM procs from RS.

 

Athyr

How is using RP on an ability that hits almost as hard as FS, off the GCD and at a fraction of the cost a DPS loss? In terms of damage / RP spent, we have nothing that compares to RS. You're much better off using that RP on RS than on FS if you had the choice.

 

Travaggie

My point exactly, and most of Erekose' posts are structured this way as in his preferred method not the ideal method to pump out max DPS (HB glyph vs. OB glyph, etc.). It would be good to stick to what most people are looking for and that is how to MAXIMIZE DPS not cool fun ways to play a DK that aren't ideal.

 

Travaggie

If you have the sigil, and most are assuming you do at this point, it is not hitting nearly as hard. On some trash situations where you really really do have excess RP that you just can't dump sure, but that's so far and few between that it is generally going to be a dps loss to use it by a fair margin.

 

Erekose

First of all, kindly stop attacking my posts. I make it amply clear that I am aware of the potential for ideal DPS loss if we are in a General Vezax-style fight where all that matters is how much Single Target DPS you do and proceed from there. If you are only worried about your single target DPS then you could just have well have stopped reading and we all would be better off. That is all I will say here in regards to the OB glyph as I have posted my thoughts on it multiple times in previous pages and this is getting long enough as is.

Your assumption of 15 RS per boss is misleading; 15 RS per boss encounter is more accurate. Thorim is not able to be attacked until phase 2 as I'm sure you are aware, and up until that point I am AoEing in the Arena, usually with a large amount of RP where every second I'm trying to do max DPS to get the things down before the next wave comes. In this situation, I'm HBing (usually with KM up) to get adds off healers and actively trying to get a RS proc, as most of the time everything dies before I am able to expend all of my RP on FS. Just adding more damage to my auto-attack at the cost of RP and *gaining* DPS via RS, similar to how a warrior will dump with Heroic Strike. When the boss appears the adds are (usually) all dead and I can proceed to enjoy a RS-free experience while we DPS the boss down.

This exact same thing applies to Freya as it is a DPS race against packs of adds and only after all the adds are dead will we be able to attack her. So while the parse and your numbers state 15 RS per boss and a DPS loss, the reality of the situation is I'm gaining damage in the phases up until the boss and then using 0 RS. I'm optimizing my damage and the best part of it is...I don't even have to do anything at all in order to accomplish it as its macro'd into all of my abilities.

I do not post here with the intent of spreading happy fun strategies just because I think they're super neato. I post with the intent of maximizing my DPS potential on the greater majority of boss fights in the current progression fights. If for some reason something changes I will happily switch to a BP rotation, one with PS in it, if theres more OBs I'll switch to OB glyph because the only reason I am here is to engage in discussion about maximum DPS and I am confident that my choices are firmly based on logic and experience with the Ulduar content and its requirements.

 

Travaggie

The Rune Strike debate has pluses and minuses on both ends so not really worth getting into I guess. But the reason why sacrificing a decent amount of single target damage for some possible situationally better AOE damage is bad is because virtually all of the hard mode and actual tough encounters in this instance revolve around single target DPS. From a DK standpoint, very few hard modes have any significant AOE damage in them, especially in a time that is critical to any extent. Think about the hard modes or regular modes for XT, Iron Council, Hodir, Thorim, Mimiron, Vezax, Freya and Yogg. The AOE in those fights (except possibly Freya at times) is almost completely trivial to the actual fight, and vs. the importance of bursting down the boss in single target fashion (including Thorim, which only starts hardmode AFTER the adds are AOE'd down). Overall I do not feel you'll increase your damage at all anyhow by the means you posted which was just icing on the cake to this argument.

 

Erekose

Refer to my previous posts in this thread as to my mathematical and real-raid-experience attempts to show that, for ITx6, OB glyph is an incredibly minor DPS gain. As for Rune Strike....Rune Strike procs from stuff attacking me, therefore if I am not getting attacked it will not proc.

My macro will attempt to use Rune Strike whenever I use an ability, but if Rune Strike cannot be used, then it will not be able to use RS.

Let me use your examples to clarify this,

Hardmode XT - We kill the heart, he goes nuts, we still continue to Single Target - No stuff is attacking me, therefor no RS.

Hardmode Iron Council - I DPS tank the small add in FP for a minute or so, then switch to UP when I acquire enough threat, in which case RS helps me. If I am not DPS tanking then I am just DPSing and since he is not hitting me, no RS. Same logic applies to the other 2 Bosses.

Hardmode Hodir - No stuff attacking me, no RS

Mimiron - Only time stuff is attacking me is possibly junkbots in which case I have a lot of RP and RS is a DPS gain, otherwise no stuff no RS

There is a pattern here. On single targets fights you get no Rune Strike procs and therefor this macro system does not negatively impact your performance. I see nothing but good things.

 

Valtiel

There's no need to feel "attacked". I'm just reminding you that since we brought up the 6xIT rotation, there's quite a good following of people looking up to your posts since you're very vocal about the rotation (and the reports and videos about it), so you should be very responsible about what kind of advice you give, expecially when it's absolutely not leaning towards maximizing dps (like the macroed RS thing, HB over OB glyph is in my opinion debatable at best and on average I would do as you and pick HB).

Besides, I said collective boss tries exactly because you "lost" 300 RP per boss, not per try.

12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.

 

Travaggie

Seriously this is getting old. There is no "good things" in your argument, there is simply nothing to gain from Rune Strike in any of those situations. If stuff is attacking you, why on earth would you want to generate even more agro for less damage? I feel bad even rebuting this, but you're simply giving out unjustified information as truth.

 

aldy

Sorry to interrupt the childish arguments about RS use and the OB glyph, but I wanted to revisit this interesting discovery. Obviously PI has better uses, but the fact that FS cost can be reduced by "spell cost reduction" is an interesting mechanic (although obviously not intended by Blizzard). The vague reference he makes at the end to "something extremely overpowered" is probably [Spark of Hope] which one might think would make FS free, which would obviously be the most enormous dps increase imaginable.
Obviously I couldn't run out and solo 10man kologarn, so I looked through trinkets and spell details in the wowhead database for other "spell cost reduction" effects and came up with [Robes of Insight] and [Burst of Knowledge]. I acquired both these items for testing:

[Robes of Insight]: When the proc from this item is up, frost strikes are free and don't consume the buff; so in UP you can spam 10 free FS. However, obviously this isn't useful in any PvE setting because of the 15 minute CD. It couldn't even be used in arena because of the 15 minute CD. Only "use" for this that I can imagine is to duel someone and unleash 10 FS in a row.
I also tested this item with DC, it makes the first DC free but it consumes the buff. I was curious if it would have an interesting effect on DRW, but it does not. I didn't bother testing gargoyle. Hungering Cold is free but consumes the buff as well.

[Burst of Knowledge]: I had high hopes for this item, but unfortunately, when the buff is up, it only reduces the cost of your FS to 22 (a 10 RP reduction). It also reduces the cost of DC by 10 RP.

To summarize, it appears that 1 RP=10 mana, therefore [Spark of Hope] would probably only be a 4.2 rp reduction. To do some quick, very basic math, (asusming there are no fractions), a 4 rp reduction would let you do 8 FS instead of 7 with the same RP pool, meaning a 14.3% increase in FS. With FS at 35% of your dmg, a 14.3% increase would be a 5% increase in total dmg. At 5,000 dps, that makes it a 250 dps trinket. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that kind of like makes it the #2 trinket just behind Greatness at 260 dps?

Please by all means, someone check my math, and someone pick up [Spark of Hope] and test it out. Also, try and think of some way to take advantage of "spell cost reduction" mechanics, I may have missed an item somewhere. Its clearly not intended to work this way, but it annoys me that Blizzard was so lazy with their programming of the new resource that is RP, so I intend to exploit it as punishment.

 

GBF

You cant be serious. There's just no way.

Holy fuck I gotta get my hands on a Spark of Hope.

 

Amroo

This is a really interesting discovery. Both, [Burst of Knowledge] and the Spark, have the same effect in the spell description for their respective proc:

So, the argument stands that SoH works the way predicted by you. The main point is, if this is working as intended or simply something Blizzard hadn't realized yet. I'm curious how BoK (or SoH) works with energy / rage classes, which can both be easily tested if someone knows a druid who owns this trinket. If energy and rage costs are also reduced this might be intended, otherwise it would probably just be a bug that came up when death knights were introduced (since the mechanism obviously already existed before WotLK).

As for the benefit your calculations were pretty much correct, but it's only half of the story:

(I)
DPS: 5000
FS-percentage: 35%
Damage increase: 5.000%
DPS-value: 250.0

(II)
DPS: 6000
FS-percentage: 35%
Damage increase: 5.000%
DPS-value: 300.0

(III)
DPS: 6000
FS-percentage: 40%
Damage increase: 5.714%
DPS-value: 342.9

It's easy to see, that ability cost reduction (ACR) works in many ways exactly opposite all other stats in the game. While most stats have diminishing returns, ACR has exponentially increasing returns - both, on itself and on other stats. Example:

The FS glyph originally decreased FS cost from 40 to 32. Assuming the [5000 DPS / 35% FS]-dummy has FS glyphed he would have done 4650 DPS* without it. So the 8 ACR from the glyph is a 7.526% damage increase. A 4 ACR on top of that already yields a flat 5% increase, which clearly shows increasing returns of ACR on itself (which also is more or less shown in III since more FS will of course cause a higher FS-percentage).

The second point is equally concerning. The DPS value of the trinket is significantly positively related to the total DPS. While other trinkets' values in absolut DPS terms stay more or less the same or increases slightly as overall DPS increases, the DPS-value of SoH increases at a 1:1 ratio to the increase in overall DPS.

These two points give reason to belief that even if the mechanism is working as intended it will be changed in the near furture, since the scaling of a trinket like this (especially if others like it are found in future raid dungeons) is much too strong. It would probably cause people in 2 expansions worth of time at level 100 to go back to Ulduar and farm Kologarn for it. Besides the fact, that any DK with a 100 spirit trinket looks like a whimsy.


(*) 5000*(0.35*4/5 + 0.65) = 4650

 

Cheesus

There is also a level 61 trink - [Auslese's Light Channeler] - that shares the same aura effect: