Unless you reset the meters right before engaging the brain you will not know if you actually ended up doing more damage in the ~30 seconds to the boss (which is one place where blood has excelled typically).
Regardless, I believe parses of the entire yogg-saron encounter can be misleading because of all the "noise" that can come into the picture (getting multiple adds on first phase which inflate AoE, getting multiple brain links between portals which, again, reduce total damage done, etc etc, this has all been pointed out before)

Point being, a full parse of the encounter may not necessarily be a good indicator of performance.
Which is ironic because this is one of the few really intense dps checks in the game as of now.

I have been enlightened to the ways of the resto druid. Seriously, having a resto druid keep Rejuvenation up on you 100% of the time, translates into a pretty decent DPS boost in unholy presence. That, combined with AMS damage seeking, assuming you get decently lucky, it eliminates the downtime in your rotation you can have at points almost entirely.

Out of curiosity, does it trigger on overheal?

Anecdotal, but I believe it does. I'll grab a resto druid in tonight's raid to test it for sure.

I've searched but not found much discussion on what I feel is a much undervalued talent.
Scent of Blood.

In the 17/51/3 build, with UP and the rotation of IT PS OB BS BS -> OB OB IT IT (Which I feel is the best until you go one further into IT PS OB BS BS -> OB IT IT IT IT territory with DRM, 6xIT seems less dps than that 5xIT+1PS rotation to me) you have 3 points 'spare' in Virulence, not really achieving much if you're over the hit cap with one of the trinkets.

In UP we have plenty of GCDs, and Scent of Blood is (or was last time I checked) currently bugged to give 10RP per swing. This could possibly equate to one more FS every 10 seconds if it procs reliably.
But the question really is - what AoE counts as 'direct damage'? Is there any dps potential for this talent?

No need, finally grabbed a Resto Druid in Dalaran, no internal cooldown and triggers off both Rejuv and WG including overheal.

The more Restos in a raid the more it'll trigger, not that I see it staying like this for long.

None, and zero. If you're over the spell hit cap with trinkets alone you should consider swapping some gear.

First point: The only difference between the 20/51 and 17/51/3 build is the Death Rune Mastery, which means even using a 20/51 build, you can still revert back to the standard frost rotations on situations that you deem necessary. The brain room is a very good example. If you're short on time, the standard IT-PS rotations would probably get you more damage dealt to the brain. If you have the time to fully finish the IT machine gun rotation while weaving FS (30s+), you would most definitely get more damage in that way.

Second point: I don't understand where the AoE element comes into play. If you're running with more than 3 adds up, chances are you're going to get overrun very easily and wipe. The 2 or 3 adds that are up are generally not tanked anywhere near each other (1 in the middle being killed and the other 1 or 2 in the raid). The brain link is not exactly a big variable that would cause significant loss to total damage done given that it breaks as soon as you enter another portal (which is like 15-20 seconds after you leave the current one). During that time, you're should either be regenerating your sanity or getting into position for another portal, which means you aren't doing damage anyways. If anything, Yogg-saron is the ultimate test to maximize your personal DPS time on whatever it is that you happen to be working on.

EDIT: Something just came up in my head. Wouldn't 4 PC T8 be essentially useless for the 20/51 build? Would the extra runic power generated actually make up for the 5% Obliterate damage lost by not Obliterating?

Quick question: is there a point in going frost without Sigil of the Vengeful Heart?
I have both Awareness and Sigil of the Frozen Conscience.
If yes, i assume it would require some OB-heavy rotation (with HB on Rime procs).
Or maybe 6xIT with Frozen Conscience?
Which one would be better?

No offense Garaddon but these are the kind of questions that should not be in this kind of thread. Rather then coming on here and asking for people to chew your food, why don't you simply give it a try yourself and see what results you get? It's not hard to simply use one method one week or one pull and then try the next... And if you do plan on asking it, might be a good idea to send a PM to one of the knowledgeable posters.

Please read the entire thread before posting people.

The thing is that I don't raid regularly with regular squad and it's rather impossible for me to "try spec x this week, then try y on the next one and comapare".
And, as you probably know, dummy tests are quite useless.
That's why I asked for it here.

[Sigil of the Vengeful Heart] adds:

(380)*(Black Ice)*(Glacier Rot)*(Blood of the North)*(Tundra Stalker)*(Two Hand Spec) = 690 Damage to FS before debuffs/Execute

[Sigil of Awareness] adds:

(336)*(Glyph)*(Two Hand Spec)*(Tundra Stalker)*(Disease Bonus) = 602 Damage to OB before Debuffs/Execute

[Sigil of Awareness] adds:

(189)*(Black Ice)*(Outbreak)*(Desecration)*(Bone Shield)*(Rage of Rivendare)*(Disease Bonus) = 390 Damage to SS before Debuffs/Execute

Now at first this may seem like a OB >> SS, but you have to remember that these numbers are not adjusted for armor. Furthermore, they are not adjusted for the amount of times a player spams a specific attack.

In general, Frost DKs will use FS ~2x as often as OB and Unholy DKs will use SS ~30% more often than a Frost DK uses OB (more, if you are using an IT spam variant).

This, coupled with the fact that SS ignores armor means that you really shouldn't be speccing into Frost until you have [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart] if you are looking to do anything remotely resembling competitive DPS. As doing the maximum amount of damage is the exact goal and purpose of these forums, please don't bring up any dumb "BUT I LIEK FRUST IT MAEKS ME FEEL FUZZY" arguments here; they are irrelevant.

Revitalize - Spell - World of Warcraft is the druid talent....sadly our resto druid doesn't get it

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish parse from 10 man last night, doing hard modes with ITx6. Very, very impressive results...highlights include 10.5k on Hodir without 10% AP buff although for some reason the web page isn't loading for me right now, but I have the recount screenshot to prove it if some reason that parse is borked :P

EDIT: It is worth pointing out that the first time we attempted Hodir I prioritized HB on CD but found that with ITx6 that is sub-optimal as the entire point of the build is to generate RP for absurd amounts of FS. On the second pull I went back to the same ITx6 I had been using for all previous bosses and it worked out much, much better.

EDIT2: I was noticing another strange Death Rune phenomenon last night..if I had two Blood Runes without Blood Tap up I found that *sometimes* when I would pestilence it would instantly convert the other Blood Rune to a Death Rune, giving me another IT. However, even though I was able to see this behavior multiple times I still don't know what causes it, or how to reliably duplicate it.

I noticed almost the same, with the Pest. Death Rune phenomenon.I noticed at your parses is, that you use very often HB on Auriya and Kologarn. Did You use it on CD?

@Darkside/Kroot
For the ITx6 Rotation. It is much better to use BT IT at startup, for the first BS BS OB OB, so you get 25 more RP and the hits will provide the % of one desease. All further rotations are never without FF and you can use BT everytime on CD, to have one IT more.

Yes I use HB on CD pretty much on Kolo as it hits all of his parts, and I use it on Auriya when the Guardian Swarm goes out. Pretty much tend to use HB on CD whenever 3+ targets are available to hit, unless I'm attempting to burn one single target down in a very limited amount of time, in which case I relegate back to my original rotation.

I am uploading a video of the rotation to Filefront as we speak that will illustrate the basic priority system including separating rune refreshes and taking advantage of waiting on KM procs and whatnot.

Unfortunately both the OP and you are incorrect when stating you should either not IT at all in the first half of the rotation, or BT before using a Blood Rune.

The best rotation I've come up with is IT, BS Blood Tap (instantly refreshishing both of your Blood Runes as Death Runes), OB OB and then either IT or UA depending on if you want to save UA. The second half of the rotation is just IT spam with FS intermingled, and I highly suggest if possible doing 2x IT 2x FS, although this will change depending on when you get KM procs and if you are fortunate enough to not have your IT eat them.

I also happen to play a Resto Druid, and read the Resto Druid class threads regularly. I can give you some insight into this. First, for a while the revitalize talent was bugged on Wild Growth such that the effect happened even if you didn't have the talent. This was fixed in 3.1.2, so you may have suddenly noticed having less RP in raids (assuming your druids didn't spec into Revitalize). Two, current theorycrafting over in the Resto Druid threads is of course all about how to output the most healing and this talent doesn't increase that. Someone attempted to determine the value of the talent to the raid, but the general consensus seemed to be it wasn't worth losing 3% spell haste over (which is the tradeoff you have to make to take it). Also it is by design that the talent procs even on overheal ticks or it would be near worthless. You can safely assume this will stay true.

I don't play my DK in any serious raiding so I am not in a position to quantify how much it works out to in terms of dps, but if someone wants to determine the average dps increase you would get from it (don't assume 100% uptime on Rejuv as we actually have to do real healing) in a real fight, I can cross post over into the Resto Druid thread so they have a real idea of how much dps it is worth. We actually need a good estimate of the benefit to Rogues and Warriors as well.

Then assuming the raid can afford to lose the healing output, it would seem a very min/max thing to have all your Resto Druids spec into revitalize.

I don't understand the justifications behind this. Raid or MT healers alike. revitalize is bound to help SOMEBODY. Since druids can maintain a separate HoT on their target, it would be logical to assume that revitalize is capable of proc'ing multiple times off several druids' HoTs stacked on 1 target. For tanks, this means extra threat. For DPS, this means extra... DPS. For healers, it's extra mana and longevity. We currently run 2-3 resto druids in our raid comp at any given time, if all of them had revitalize (and sadly none of them do because they all used your justification to "output as much healing done as possible" which is probably the most selfish thing I have ever heard), the benefit to the raid is far greater than shaving not even .02s off your already fast-casting HoTs. It's almost as bad as a priest/shaman taking minuscule healing boost talents over Inspiration/Ancestral Fortitude.

It depends a lot on what DK spec you have in your raid, Frost benefits far more than the other specs from the extra RP.
First, their main attack is a RP-ability and not a Rune-ability like for the other specs and second, assuming unholy presence, there is usually always a free GCD to fit in another FS (if not, that extra FS does more damage than the "opportunity cost" of delaying your rotation, so it's always a win).


Let's do some calculations:

Assuming my slave druid keeps rejuv on me for an entire minute, i.e. 20 ticks. I think it's also safe to assume that I'll get once per minute a WG from that druid, which is another 7 ticks, making 27 ticks. A 15% proc chance averages that at 4.05 (or 4) procs per minute, which equals an additional 64 RP or 2 Frost Strikes.

Let's take an average FS value of 6000 (which should be less than in a raid setting with SotVH, but just to make the point) that is 12000 damage per minute for that death knight or a 200 DPS increase.

I think as soon as there are two druids in the raid with this talent they don't actually have to worry about keeping WG / RJ on the death knight, because he will soak up enough random WG or RJ to more or less guarantee 4 procs per minute or probably more. But as I said, Frost DKs benefit probably more than any other spec or class from that talent. But let's just assume, that talent gives on average every damage dealer in the raid an increase of 60 dps (which is, I think, realistic, since one Frost DK alone takes care of two to three other people who might not benefit at all), that's an increase of 1000 dps for 17 damage dealers. So two druids spending those 3 talent points increase the raid's DPS by more than 1 percent even in this scenario where I've only a low amount of overall benefits into account, it's probably far more. I'm not sure, but I think that's worth it.

That's pretty much it. It may be harsh to call all druids selfish, but 3% haste is seriously no competition for the overall benefit to the raid.

About the BT "trick", I remember this being discussed to some extent in the original DK DPS thread and I'm still having a problem along these lines: Blood Tap buff is still up and on my next rotation I end up with DBuuff and I either have to wait for BT to run out and the Death rune to go back to Blood or if I BSx2 here I end up with an endless cycle of DBuuff -> BDuuff. I could BB x 2 and the death rune would disappear but this isn't optimal in all situations because I end up having to BSx2 on the NEXT rotation. Waiting for BT to end finds me standing around doing nothing but HoW for about 4 secs. In UP I have burned all that "extra" RP and used my other runes.

Essentially it front loads your first OB and gives you RP but the downtime is pushed into your second rotation. Are other people not having this issue? Am I timing it wrong? How do I avoid DBuuff.

And about Revitalize, the discussion was less than conclusive. 3% haste (most of us are haste capped on our instants or very close to it) is hard to out-weigh the type of mana and power regains that Revitalize provides for the entire raid. Especially when you have to waste 1 talent point and spend 3 talent points to get that 3% haste. You can also still get Revitalize and get 3% haste. You just lose Living Seed (which isn't all that hot either).

Since it's a buff, you can probably just click it off after you use the Death Rune, and resume normal play.

[edit]: Just tried this and it works perfectly. Just BT -> IT -> IT -> <Remove Buff> and resume your normal play.

I did not say Awareness was ever better than Vengeful Heart, I said the less OB (and therefore more FS) heavy rotations are worse until you get Vengeful Heart. I said that information would be useful in the OP for the people who come here with the questions, the ones that ask "what should my rotation be?"

If you are going to post something that calls someone else wrong, at least make an attempt to understand what their post says first.

EDIT: Replaced old link with new link

IT6.wmv Download File

Video of the ITx6 rotation.