• Soilantgreen64

Updating for 3.3 is currently in process, bear with me while the thread gets a little overhauled

Over the next day or so, I'm going to be messing with the formatting, adding/deleting some things, and in general making a bunch of changes. If you happen across this post in this state, check back in a day or so

A majority of the updates are complete, there are still a few small additions I would like to make.
 

Contents

1 Common Abbreviations 2 Specs 2.1 Glyph of Dark Death Build 2.2 Glyph of Disease Build 3 Runeforges 4 Glyphs 5 Rotations 5.1 Glyph of Dark Death Rotation 5.2 Glyph of Disease Rotation 5.3 AoE Rotations 6 Rolling Diseases 7 Dancing Rune Weapon 7.1 Priority Systems 8 Unholy Presence v Blood Presence 9 Taking Advantage of AMS 9.1 Icecrown Citadel 10 Rune Striking? 11 Gearing and Stat Weights 11.1 Hit and Expertise 11.2 Set Bonuses 12 Sigils 13 Consumables & Cooldowns 14 Macros 15 How come I'm not doing XXX DPS? 16 Useful Addons 17 Professions 17.1 Jewelcrafting 17.2 Blacksmithing 17.3 Engineering 17.4 The Rest 18 Edits

[top] Common Abbreviations

AoE = Area of Effect
AMS = Anti-Magic Shell
APE = Attack Power Equivalence
BB = Blood Boil
BCB = Blood Caked Blade
BP = Blood Presence
IT = Icy Touch
DK = Death Knight
DC = Death Coil
DnD = Death and Decay
DPS = Damage per Second
DRW = Dancing Rune Weapon
FC = Rune of the Fallen Crusader
GCD = Global Cooldown
GoD = Glyph of Disease
GoDD = Glyph of Dark Death
HoW = Horn of Winter
PS = Plague Strike
RP = Runic Power
UP = Unholy Presence

[top] Specs

In 3.3 there are two general valid build for the blood spec, and they differ simply by 1 talent point, and a glyph.

[top] Glyph of Dark Death Build

51/0/20

[top] Glyph of Disease Build

51/0/20

These are your two main builds, and we'll discuss later the differences between them, and how to decide what is right for you.

In the Blood tree you will have 4 points to play with. If you are looking for absolute max DPS you will want to go with 3/3 Bloodworms and 1 point in Imp Blood presence. Why? Bloodworms will add a little (reports say ~ 80) DPS, and your other options being Mark of Blood and Vampiric Blood, both of which require the use of a Blood Rune, and that’s 1 less Heart Strike!

In the Unholy tree the most common line of thinking goes: Ravenous Dead > BCB > Necrosis. From my own experience, I’ve found BCB to be slightly higher than 1% DPS per talent point, whereas Necrosis was slightly < 1% DPS per talent point. Keep in mind though that Necrosis can effectively crit, whereas BCB cannot, so people with very high crit rates may see a swing in the relative value of these two talents. Typically you max all three, but if you want to play around, have at it.

Morbidity works itself out to be approximately .6% DPS per point, which is why we remove the point from there for our Glyph of Disease Build which requires 2/2 epidemic.

[top] Runeforges

There is currently only one viable Runeforge for PvE DPS: Fallen Crusader.

[top] Glyphs

Major

• [Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon]
• [Glyph of Death Strike]
• [Glyph of Dark Death]*
• [Glyph of Disease]*

*You will either use GoD or GoDD as your 3rd glyph, depending on which build you choose to go for.

Minor

• [Glyph of Horn of Winter]
• [Glyph of Pestilence]
• [Glyph of Raise Dead]

[top] Rotations

The GoD and GoDD builds have differing rotations, and in order to make the most out of each build, it is important that you use the correct rotation

For both rotations, you will be able to dump 2 Death Coils at one break, and then one at the other. This depends on whether you start a fight with RP or not. It is not important where a particular phase falls, and so we'll just represent it with -Dump-.

[top] Glyph of Dark Death Rotation

IT-PS-HS-HS-DS -Dump- DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-

Beginning with Dark Death as it is the easier of the two. On a pull to minimize your wasted GCDs during your dump phase you can cast HoW, and raise your Ghoul.

[top] Glyph of Disease Rotation

The GoD rotation is made up of two distinct parts. There is your Open Phase (1), and then the repeated phase (2). You begin with the (1) rotation to set up your diseases, and then repeat two until your diseases fall of some how, or the enemy dies

(1) IT-PS-HS-HS-DS -Dump- DS-HS-HS-HS-Pest -Dump-
(2) HS-HS-HS-HS-DS -Dump- DS-HS-HS-HS-Pest

[top] AoE Rotations

Blood's strength is it's ability to do exceptional single - or double - target damage, once you exceed 3 or 4 enemies, you would be much better suited using a UH off spec for AOE fights. Most of the AOE in ICC currently are trash fights, which isn't a main concern of this guide. In general for AOE you want to spead your diseases, and use Blood Boil. As Blood generates a large amount of death runes, especially the Glyph of Disease spec, you will be able to cast a tremendous amount of Blood Boils.

In general Blood Boil begins to outperform HS at around 5-6 targets, your mileage may vary, use a Scrolling Combat mod that shows the sum of your AoE attacks, or else it will be very hard to tell for yourself.

[top] Rolling Diseases

Pre 3.2 you could load up your procs, cast diseases, and using GoD would maintain the higher power diseases throughout the fight. This is no longer the case, diseases do not roll anymore. It was fun while it lasted.

[top] Dancing Rune Weapon

DRW will gain buffs you have before casting it, but will not get things used after, i.e. Hysteria, potions, etc. Heart Strikes from DRW also are affected by its diseases, and the diseases will stay even after DRW has expired. For this reason it is proper to cast DRW before refreshing your diseases. Note: your heart strikes do not benefit from your DRW's diseases, and vise-versa.

In 3.3 DRW now currently acts as a debuff on your target. This puts us a little bit more at the mercy of Blizzard's pet AI, unfortunately. In its current form the DRW is making its way behind your target, so parry's should still be minimized.

Your DRW checklist looks something like this, in order of importance (and yes, I finally added "Heroism" for all the Alliance out there, ugh).

• Bloodlust/Heroism
• Hysteria
• On use trinkets / Trinket Procs
• Empowered Rune Weapon
• Potion of Speed

Hitting all of those criteria will maximize your DRWs DPS, very important to maximizing your own DPS.

Obviously you can't always meet every criteria, as some are out of your control. You always want to wait for Hysteria if you think the fight will last long enough to do so, and you especially have to make sure your diseases are up and death runes are ready. If you have on use trinkets, you want to be sure to use them before popping DRW as well. Rarely will you be able to use Empowered Rune Weapon twice in one fight.

I'm not a huge fan of waiting on trinket procs, like Greatness or Grim Toll/Mjolnir. I tend to take the approach that if they are up, awesome but if they are not I don't wait for them. If you "feel" like you are due for a proc, it might be worth waiting 1 or 2 CGDs, but I don't know that I would go much beyond that. This is especially true due to the fact that often times your DRW is part of a coordinated burst, like XT heart phase, and you dont want to be lagging behind waiting for a proc.

That being said, if it is a long fairly straighforward fight like Ignis with no real burst phase requirement, I would probably wait to try to maximize my DPS.

It should also be noted that we most often have a lot of procs lining up at the beginning of a fight. If you want to use DRW at the start of a fight, it should always be used after your first full rotation, otherwise you will clip your original diseases losing out on DPS.

[top] Priority Systems

The priority structure to Frost DPS is significantly more complicated than Blood. Apart from adjusting your rotation for missed strikes things flow quite smoothly. The biggest thing you will be watching for will be not Heart Striking right after your diseases have fallen off.

[top] Unholy Presence v Blood Presence

Fortunately for Blood DKs this is an easy question. We hit hard, we use Blood Presence. Blood has a nice tight rotation, and if you are in UH Presence you will spend a considerable amount of time waiting for something to do.

As with so many things, there are occasions when you may find running in UH presence to be useful, but overall our best DPS presence is blood.

[top] Taking Advantage of AMS

The best use of AMS is to either generate a lot of RP in order to DRW, or to allow for a 2nd Death Coil in the middle of your rotation. HS will always hit harder than death coil, so do not stand around casting DC because you feel bad about wasting RP.

[top] Icecrown Citadel

This section is incomplete, I'll be working on adding these parts in.

[top] Rune Striking?

I wasn't really a convert to Rune Striking until after a little spell of tanking with my DK, and begin using the Rune Strike macros with my Death Strikes and Heart Strikes. The majority of fights the issue will never come up, as you dont find yourself dodging or parrying very often, but on the occasions where you can, Rune Strike is a DPS increase. Once you have your first big Rune Strike crit for 20k+ at the cost of 20 RP, you'll be glad you did.

Following is a log from Marrogar, showing just how good Rune Strike can be in situations where you can use it.
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

The following are the macros used for Death Strike and Heart Strike. If Rune Strike becomes available it will cast that, otherwise it will be business as usual:

#showtooltip Death Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Death Strike;
/cast !Rune Strike;
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");

#showtooltip Heart Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Heart Strike;
/cast !Rune Strike;
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");

[top] Gearing and Stat Weights

One thing I've found while keeping this thread is posting Stat Weights really isn't a good idea. Before reading on know this, the stat weights listed below are not perfect stat weights for your character. To really get a good idea of what stat weights are for you, you need to run your own sims and do your own research based on your particular gearset. With that disclaimer, we'll move on.

The two most important stats for Blood DKs are Strength and Armor Penetration. The general rule of thumb while gearing up is ALWAYS gem for STR, except to meet Meta gem requirements.

The following are stat weights as of 3.3 which I currently use, and feel are fairly representative.

Stat	APE
Attack Power	1
Weapon DPS	9.89
Strength	2.89
Armor Penetration	2.75
Hit Rating (to cap)	2.51
Expertise Rating	2.47
Crit Rating	1.56
Haste Rating	1.5
Agility	1.37
Hit Rating (to spell hit cap)	.52
Armor	.03

This link will allow you to see which gear in the Wowhead database is currently best according to these weights:
Blood Loot Weighting

[top] Hit and Expertise

Theoretically both STR and ArP are more important stats then both Hit or Expertise, which means that even if you are not Hit Capped, or Expertise capped, you will always see the biggest DPS increase by gemming STR/ArP.

The melee hit cap is 8% or ~262 Hit rating, this should be fairly easy to obtain with the gear currently available. The challenge I have found is typically not overshooting the Hit Cap by too much, at one point sitting at a frustrating 383 Hit Rating!

The soft expertise cap is a little more tricky as there are so many variable that go into it. It is a little more straightforward now that the 5 expertise on Blood Gorged was converted to 10% ArP. You want to be aiming for 25 Expertise (note "25 Expertise" not "25 Expertise Rating").

The relative weights of these stats were calculated factoring in misses, etc. so let's please not turn this thread into another argument about sims.

The use of both sims and some great spreadsheet are being applied in the BiS thread, covering all specs of DKs. While new content continues to be bested, and new drops continue to be added I will for now refer you to that thread, as they are doing a great job keeping up with the changes.

Gear Lists will also be uploaded once the approximate weightings have been sorted out. For now, it is probably best to refer to the http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t55505-o...ng_bis_thread/.

[top] Set Bonuses

These are the relative weights of the set bonuses for Blood DKs

Blood set bonus weights:

Blood	APE
T7-2p	60
T7-4p	39
T8-2p	83
T8-4p	104

[top] Sigils

Now that Death Strike has been added to [Sigil of Virulence] it becomes the best sigil for Blood DKs, and fortunately it is also incredibly easy to get.

[top] Consumables & Cooldowns

Flask: [Flask of Endless Rage]
Primary Potion:[Potion of Speed]
Secondary Potion: [Indestructible Potion] (The gain from Bladed Armor is ~97 AP).

All cooldowns should be timed with Bloodlust (which your raidleader should be calling at the start of every fight). If for some reason you are saving Lust (Mimiron P2, for example), use cooldowns (sans potion) immedietly at the beginning of the fight and then again during Bloodlust.

Notes on [Indestructible Potion]: This should be used about 5s before you enter into combat on any given fight. This will result in you not being potion locked for that particular encounter and enable you to use another potion as soon as the cooldown expires. It should also be noted that the AP gains from the armor will not be calculated till your strength changes in value. This can be done via a simple weaponswap macro, cancelling and reapplying HoW or simply waiting for a FC proc.

[top] Macros

Dancing Rune Weapon:
Note this macro has changed due to the new functionality of DRW

Huge Burst Macro
Chug a haste pot, use any trinkets (The 10 above is the glove slot for engineers), cast Hysteria on yourself, Blood Fury for us Orcs (for the Horde!), and finally summon your DRW

Mind Freeze Focus
For pesky interrupt fights

[top] How come I'm not doing XXX DPS?

There are a great many sites out there now where you can see logs from thousands of different players. This is good, and in a way also bad. Going out to WorldOfLogs, and looking up the top Blood DK for a fight, is probably not a good way to yardstick your DPS. The reason being, it is really easy to artificially inflate your DPS outside what is reasonable to be expected from a Blood DK for the sole reason of "Seeing your name in lights". If you wonder why someone did 6k more DPS then you did on a fight, be sure to read the logs carefully, and check out their gear. If someone is significantly better geared than you, and has 3 or 4 nice rogues willing to chain Tricks for them, it will lead to a large disparity.

[top] Useful Addons

There are a lot of great addons for DKs. Here of some of those I have found to be most useful:

PowerAuras Classic / TellMeWhen: Knowing when your trinkets are procced is extremely useful for maximizing your DPS, both these Addons provide a way to alert yourself to import skill/item procs

Bartender: You will have lots of hotkeys, Bartender is a great bar addon with really easy keybinding functions

Magic Runes: There are a number of addons that provide much better rune management and display options then the default rune system Blizzard provides.

NeedToKnow: You should have a convenient way to track your diseases, and this is a great, and very customizable addon for doing so.

Pawn: This addon allows you to compare gear and enter your own ratings, such as the Stat Weights provided above, and gives you a total value for each item. Very useful is determining which items are upgrades for you very quickly.

[top] Professions

If you are looking to make gold, I don't care, this isn't the section for you. If you have lots of gold to spend, and want to maximize the effectiveness of your DK, it's going to be expensive.

[top] Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting went through a fairly significant change in 3.2. The goal was to bring it back in line with the other professions. The most significant change was to the [Dragon's Eye]s. Our best gems are now [Bold Dragon's Eye] and [Fractured Dragon's Eye] depending on your current gearing. These are no longer prismatic, so we lose the ability to easily cover our Meta Gem requirements.

Compared to the non-JC versions of [Bold Cardinal Ruby] and [Fractured Cardinal Ruby], you will be gaining a total of 42 strength through JC.

[top] Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is expensive to level, but the benefits are worth it in the end. The two free sockets you get, gloves and bracers, allow the use of two more +20 STR/ArP gems, for a total benefit of 40 Strength/ArP. This is close to the benefit you see from J/C'ing and while expensive, the Combo of Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting is the best 2 professions you can select.

[top] Engineering

I'll set aside engineering b/c some people just like it, and I can't hold that against them. The only real advantage engineers get are the Hand Mounted Pyro Rockets and Hyperspeed Accellerators. Both of these are solid glove bonuses, and if engineering got anything else, could make it a competitive choice, popping speed pots, bloodlust, and the Hyperspeed Accellerators is a blast.

I've recently heard rumblings of more changes to come for engineers to make the profession more competitive for a PvE selection, but nothing finalized yet to my knowledge.

[top] The Rest

Everything else is just a huge drop from those already mentioned:

Enchanting: 2 ring enchants at 40 AP a pop, a total of 80 AP

Leatherworking: 130 AP to bracers, note that you CANNOT stack this with the 50 AP bracer enchant, so the net gain here is 80 AP.

Inscription: 120 AP 15 crit shoulder enchant, a gain of 80 AP.

Tailoring: Cloak enchant, Swordguard Embroidery, grants 400 AP for 15 seconds. The difference here is ~100 AP vs 23 Haste which comes out to an APE gain of roughly 65 based on a 3.1 Haste value of 1.5. In order for this to surpass other professions, the APE of Haste would have to dip to ~.87. I am unaware of any intensive testing that has been done with this, but if you really love timing procs you would have great results laying this on top of greatness, fallen crusader, and your favorite ArP trinket procs.

Alchemy: Increased potion effectiveness and duration, havent crunched the numbers to see how much this adds, but I've never heard it come up as a serious contender. Haven't personally been able to verify yet, but I assume in 3.2 this will give you an extra 80 AP.

Skinning: 40 crit rating, ugh

Mining: 60 stamina, bleh

Herbalism: Self heal, whee

[top] Edits

[1]: 05.29.09 Thread Launched
[2]: 05.30.09 Clarified DS first rotation usage, added some stat weight info, added DRW Section
[3]: 06.01.09 Minor edits, added Proffesions section
[4]: 06.01.09 Added set bonuses
[5]: 08.06.09 Began 3.2 Updates - profession bonuses
[6]: 01.10.10 3.2 Update

 

• Darkside

Hope this doesn't come across as too mean, but I'd axe the /castsequence macro. While they can be useful in extremely limited situations, including one in a post like this will probably just confuse people and lead to a lot of unnecessary clutter, flaming and infractions.

[e]: Title should be changed to "Bloody Simple", IMO.

<Miarose> gs is like making sure the person your having sex with has a REALLY awesome condom but not caring about the dick

 

• Soilantgreen64

Haha no worries, like I said, for about 3 weeks I had to play 1 handed so it was necessary to use a castsequence macro for me. I figured why not include it for others too. Some people may find it helpful, those who think they are above it can of course ignore it.

You must not be a Coen Brothers fan Blood Simple

And thank you again for letting me use your outline and a lot of information from your post, I hope you feel I've done it justice.

 

cyberthug

one suggestion i have for this post, you should maybe post some simple hit/exp/ arp stats what people need to shoot for. What the caps are etc..

Great jost btw

 

Paratrooper1508

Maybe one other thing to include would be how exactly the DRW mechanics work, why you want it on top of the mob etc. Just general explanations of the why and how of blood specific mechanics.

Great post though, exactly what I was looking for

Edit: may as well through in comparisons on professions too. As I understand it BS/JC is the more or less mutually agreed best dps combo (and maybe best tank combo?). This is fairly common knowledge but hey, if you're giong to make a compendium post, why not?

Further Edit: things Is uggested implimented, mod please delete this post.

 

hai2u2

Thank you for this post, it is about time someone condensed the large volume of knowledge from the main thread.
Hopefully it cuts down the amount of people who ask already discussed questions =].

 

Joshyboy

Thanks alot this has been a huge help
By the way I personally find using DS first in my rotation gives me less time waiting around after the first RP dump, and since DS has no gains from diseased targets, bar the extra healing, Its always been a favorite option for me.

 

hai2u2

Death Strike damage scales with [Glyph of Death Strike]. Beginning a rotation with this is a dps loss due to the fact you have no runic power.

 

Joshyboy

Touché
But I don't personally mind a small DPS loss to stop myself sitting here doing nothing for a second
Personal prefrance I suppose.

 

raledon

A question- according to you, we should use DRW when there are dots on the target. On the other hand, if we cast dots while using the DRW the target is afflicted by the diseases as well. Is it realy better dpswise to avoid the double disease?

 

DocDrdragon

Armor pen

This needs a section, caps at 100% before sunder armor and FF , with 10% from talents we cap at 90%. Anything more will be a waste.

Macros

Add /startattack to the start of your dps macros

AOE

Spam DS and BB

6k dps on thorim

Wow Web Stats

 

kelben

The reason some people start with DS for their rotation is for the 10% ap bonus.

I've been fiddling around for the last half hour with the DRW rotation. I've always assumed that putting up diseases for DRW was the way to go but honestly I don't know. So I've done a bit of testing and its rather inclusive, the dmg for DRW seems to similar with both rotations. I cut out Death Coils to maximize testing results. What it basically boils down to is a Death strike vs diseases. 7 Heart strikes and 2 Deathstrike vs 6 Heart strike, 1 Death strike, 2 diseases.

The one disadvantage of having diseases rolling before summoning DRW is that your diseases will fall off at the near the end of your DRW rotation forcing you reapply then, therefore if your applying diseases during your DRW rotation why not apply at the start thus giving your DRW a dmg boost. For the DRW it is roughly 100 dmg for non crits and 200 dmg for crits using diseases.

Also I believe DRW benefits from precasting hysteria before summoning it, but again I'm not entirely sure about this.

Haste is the devil...

 

Joshyboy

I've discovered that DRW does benefit from Hysteria
DRW is based on the damage you deal, be It buffed or unbuffed.

 

kelben

Also I believe DRW benefits from precasting hysteria before summoning it, but again I'm not entirely sure about this. Does DRW double dip from hysteria.

I assume DRW benefits from procs, FC, 10% ap, Greatness etc, so timing DRW with max procs should increase DRW dps. Does DRW benefit from the Grim Toll proc? And considering that Heart Strike hits so much harder then DC, I'd assume that using DC during DRW duration is a dps loss unless you can't do anything else.

Usage of Ghoul, and AtoD wasn't discussed in the original post. I personally try and pop a haste potion during heroism and then summon AtoD (reduced cast time ftw). The one thing I've been unsure of is should I be swapping to UP for even further reduced cast time or is that too great of a loss.

Using Bloodtap to sneak in an extra Heart Strike will also increase DPS and the runic power gain does add up. Starting fights off at full runic power also increases your dps for the fight as it allows you summon a DRW immediately at the start of the fight.

I've also experiment with talent values using the Death Knight Simulator. For Blood Dps, Necrosis > Ravenous Dead > BCB > Morbity. The other thing I've know for a long time now is that 1 point in Impurity is better then DRW. After some quick work on the sim, turns out that the gylph of disease is the best gylph followed very closely by the Icy Touch Gylph then the Plague Strike Gylph. I need more input here on this matter but I'm seriously considering dropping DRW. I'm trying to figure out if burst value from DRW balances it out for some fights.

oh and that 44 / 0 / 27 spec is horrid.

Haste is the devil...

 

Kaejin

You're putting far too much faith into sim results and not enough into actual play results. BCB is, per point, better than Necrosis. Each point into BCB yields a bit over 1% of my dps, while each point into Necrosis is a little under 1%.

I also have a hard time believeing 1/5 Impurity being better than DRW for a blood build, of all things. DRW ranges from 3-5% of my DPS on most Ulduar fights, depending on the length of the fight. You're implying that Impurity is a at least a 3% dps gain per point.

I don't even know what to say about your opinion on glyphs. Those three together, despite each of them being subpar for a blood spec, is counterintuitive.

 

• Soilantgreen64

For talents like this you really need to look at actual results as Kaejin mentions. Take this WWS from a recent Ignis fight for example:

Wow Web Stats

BCB was 4% of my damage, vs Necrosis at 5%. Clearly BCB >> Necrosis from this parse, and these results are very typical. In general BCB works out to >1% dps/point whereas Necrosis is <1% dps per point.

Plague strike is only 2% of the DPS which would make the Plague Strike glyph worth a measly .4% dps.
At a maximum the Icy touch glyph would have been worth about .5%

The DRW glyph can be shown for this fight to have been worth ~ 1.3% dps
The Glyph of Dark Death contributed approximately 1.3% dps as well.
The Death Strike glyph is a lot harder to nail down, but at a maximum would have been ~ 1.9%

Clearly the IT and PS glyphs are inferior, and have never been brought up in any serious conversation about Blood DPS.

 

kelben

Heh, I feel a bit under attack here. Firstly, why cannot we not trust the sim? Secondly, the three gylphs I talked about were for the 50/0/21 build where you don't have DRW and therefore need a 3rd alternate gylph. The main reason I mentioned the impurity build was it has been brough up several times and I didn't see any mention of it in this thread.

The main reason I'd challenge sim results is that the sim deals in hours not minutes that fights are in game, something like impurity adds up quickly after 1000 hours of simulated time.

Haste is the devil...

 

zuubtastic

I'm in slight shock at what I'm reading about DRW and it's correct timing in regards to when to cast it. I had always been under the impression that it was better to cast a couple things during it's uptime:

Diseases - if you track diseases on an enemy, re-applying icy touch and plague strike after casting DRW I find it to report that you end up with 4 diseases on the target: Your IT and PS, and the DRW IT and PS. If you check your combat log you can see where it says "Rune Weapon's Icy Touch," etc. Is your DRW's HS dmg modified by your character's dots on the target, or it's own dots? I would assume it would be modified based on the dots it has placed on a target and then would not understand why you would summon your DRW and not apply dots.

Hysteria as well was another buff that I thought was replicated by your DRW if you used it while it was up.

Both of these are vastly inaccurate?

 

• Soilantgreen64

DRW will cast IT and PS, and the diseases will show up, however you dont benefit from them, and the most recent information I have come across has indicated that similarly to how DRW's Obliterates weren't affected by its diseases, neither are it's Heart Strikes.

DRW No longer casts Hysteria, so you must use Hysteria before you cast DRW, this one is 100% concrete.

Sims are a good tool for replicating game situations, however they should not be viewed as a replacement. That being said I really dont want to have this whole sim argument in this thread, as it worked it's way into the last thread. Sims are not blood spec specific, if you want to show evidence from personal experience with your Blood spec that shows some evidence backing up what you've found from a sim, by all means please do.

As far as impurity is concerned, at maximum you are receiving a 4% bonus on <20% of your dps. DRW makes up at least 5% of your dps for a single point. I dont see how these two options can even be comparable. Again, if someone has some more concrete information for me other than sim results, I'd be interested.

In part I dont trust the sims 100% because I have done a lot of testing with them myself, they are not perfect, and in some situations they can make grievous errors.

In that situation I would continue to HS through the end of the DRW, rather than force the diseases, you overall DPS will be much better if you aren't wasting DRW time putting up diseases.

 

kelben

I think I figured out my own answer to the question of DRW buffage, DRW does 50% of the dmg you do (before its own crit rate), if you hit harder it hits harder. So hysteria increases your dmg and thus increases its dmg, it doesn't double dip from buffs to increase its dps. I just ended up testing Hysteria and DRW on a target dummy, DRW had similar dmg regardless of when I cast Hysteria (before or after summoning DRW), I also did a dry run of DRW without hysteria to see the difference.

The one thing I'm trying to figure out current is the balance between str and apr. Using the sim, it displayed at dps increase for gemming APR until my str reach around 1546, at which point I started loosing dps. Has anyone nailed a more accurate means to figure out what the minimum level of strength is needed?

And back to my orginal questions of: maximizing DRW dps and haste, UP and AtoD.

Cast Deathcoils while DRW is active? Cast diseases before or after casting DRW? Best time to use a haste potion? On DRW summon or for AotD channeling?

DRW Macro - Slightly different then the one posted but similiar results.

showtooltip
/cleartarget
/cast Dancing Rune Weapon
/targetlasttarget

Haste is the devil...

 

Kaejin

I misunderstood and thought you meant using all of those Glyphs instread of just replacing the DRW glyph.

Regardless, there's no reason to trust the sim over the actual game. They're useful tools to get an idea of how things might turn out, but in the end the simulations aren't the ones killing bosses in Ulduar.

 

• Soilantgreen64

This is not exactly true. You can browse the log file of the Heart Phase of XT that I posted, and see my attacks and my DRW's attacks.

DRW will copy your attacks, but it isn't as simple as doing 50% of your damage. For example, you can crit a DS, and your DRWs DS might not crit. Conversely you can have a normal hit on your DS, and your DRWs DS can crit.

DRW sort of has a mind of its own. Cast DRW and then back out of melee range of your target, DRW will keep attacking, even though you arent hitting.

 

AtheistGod

That behavior has caused some interesting things. DRW will cast every ability you try to. Even if you miss/get dodged DRW will cast it and likely hit. So when you recast since your runes came back DRW will cast it again as well.

 

• Soilantgreen64

Ok hopefully this will do a decent job of explaining things. I did some limited tested and my observations indicated that your DRW did indeed benefit from the IT and PS that IT put up (not the ones you put up), so where does that leave us.

If you cast IT+PS right before you DRW, with DRW up you can get off
6xHS+2xDS

If you cast DRW and then cast IT+PS you can do one of two things:
A)IT+PS+6HS or
B)IT+PS+4HS+2DS
where your HS is affected by the +20% from IT and PS, so they really look like
A)IT+PS+6HS*1.2 = IT+PS+7.2HS or
B)IT+PS+4HS*1.2 = IT+PS+4.8HS + 2DS

The second case is obviously the easier to compare

6HS+2DS vs IT+PS+4.8HS + 2DS or
6HS vs IT+PS+4.8HS or
1.2HS vs IT+PS

And typically that seems like that's a pretty even trade, but remember that Hysteria only affects physical damage, so you are really looking at
1.4 HS vs IT+PS, and here the 1.4HS is going to be better every time.

The other case is a little more complicated as it boils down to
6HS + 2DS vs IT+PS +7.2HS then hysteria gives
7.2HS +2.4DS vs IT + PS +8.64HS or
2.4DS vs IT+PS+1.44 HS

Which you should also be able to see for yourself that once again the case in which we cast IT+PS BEFORE DRW, wins out every time. Let me also add that this doesn't even factor in the fact that you would be casting IT+PS YOURSELF twice in the hysteria as opposed to once. So casting IT+PS after DRW/Hysteria lowers the DRWs damage, and your own.

 

raledon

Taking Soilantgreen64 math one step further, I will input numbers from his own WWS log from the first post.
second case: 1.4 HS vs IT+PS=>
1.4*(0.61*3300+0.39*2.45*3300) vs (0.74*1270+0.26*2*1270) + (1630*0.64+1630*2.3*0.36)+(21/3)*(540+540)=>
1.4*(2013+3153) vs (940+660) + (1043+1350) + (7*1080) =>
1.4*5166 vs 1600 + 2393 + 7560 =>
7232.4 vs 11553=>
1 vs 1.6
IT+PS does nearly 60% more damage than a heart strike (you are welcome to check my math, I might be wrong) [check edit below]

first case:
2.4DS vs IT + PS + 1.44HS
2.4*(4530*0.58+0.42*4530*2.45) vs 11553+5166*1.44 (taking math from first case) =>
2.4*(2627+4661)=2.4*7288 (ds damage) vs 11553+7.439
17492 vs 18992
1 vs 1.08

In the first case, the dots option will cause roughly 8% more damage. [check edit below]

Assuming my math is not flawd, it turns out that going thro the first case (HS over DS) does more damage than the other two options.
Guidelines on how I did the math- % of hits*avg damage*modifier.
Since our rune weapons does 50% of our damage, the caster damage directly translates to the DRW damage.

Edit: It seems I have one flaw in my math I just now noticed: the numbers I compared were after we removed some stuff. In reality, the percent diffrence is much smaller, and the diffrence between them is the raw number (or we can just calculate the whole rotation). So the first case does 18992-17492=1500 more damage than without using plagues, and the second case does 11553-7232=4321 more damage than without using plagues.
Conclusion: the said rotation of IT+PS+4HS+2DS will yield best results. This might be changed if you stack Armor piercing, but with current gear it doesn't seem to be the case.