Blood Simple - A Consolidated Blood DK DPS Guide

• Soilantgreen64 · 05/30/09, 1:43 AM

The information below is kept as up to date as possible. Since 3.1 the changes that blood DKs have gone through are mostly small changes, none of which have significantly affected the spec.

CONTENTS

Common Abbreviations
Specs & Runeforges
--Accepted
--Experimental
--Runeforges
Glyphs
--Major
--Minor
Generalized Rotation
--Single Target
--Dancing Rune Weapon
--AoE
--Priority Systems
--UP vs. BP
Taking Advantage of AMS
Gearing & Stat Weights
--Set bonuses
--Sigils
Consumables & Cooldowns
Macros
WWS Parses
Useful Addons
Professions
Things to Come
Edits/Changes

I. 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
HoW = Horn of Winter
PS = Plague Strike
RP = Runic Power
UP = Unholy Presence

II. SPECS

Currently Accepted Spec(s)

51/0/20

The meat and potatoes of a Blood spec are the same, the variants will honestly show very little difference, and I’m not really sure if some of the changes would be noticeable even over a long period of time due to RNG etc.

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. Some people like to get 2 points into Night of the Dead as well. 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.

Morbidity works itself out to be approximately .6% DPS per point, fairly m’eh unless you are using DnD a lot.

Conventional wisdom is currently that you only need 1 point in epidemic.

51/2/18

The 51/2/18 build utilizes Runic Power Mastery in the frost tree. I don’t personally use this build as I prefer the passive BCB, although I might consider it if I had the Sigil of Vengeful Heart making my DC’s feel like they had a little more oomph. Here you would want to max Morbidity as DC’s should become a higher % of your DPS with a higher RP ceiling. Some people also like this build b/c they say it makes it easier to not drop too low in RP, screwing up the Death Strike Glyph.

Experimental Spec(s)

44/0/27

Theory here being that since the DRW nerf, it isn't that great, and picking up perm-ghoul and UB will generate more DPS. I haven't seen this spec at the top of any DPS charts, and don't think it is worth giving up both DRW and 10% ArP + 10% Dmg from Blood Gorged. That being said I haven't tried it myself.

Runeforges

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

III. GLYPHS

Major

*[Glyph of Disease] has been fixed in 3.2, and now properly refreshes all your diseases. The increase in damage done by diseases in 3.2 makes keeping them up more of a priority, and this should put [Glyph of Disease] ahead of [Glyph of Dark Death] in your prioritization. In 3.2.2 [Sigil of Virulence] overtakes SotVH and this will also lessen the importance of [Glyph of Dark Death]

Minor

IV. GENERALIZED ROTATIONS

SINGLE TARGET

The meat of your single target rotation will be

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

In the first dump phase of your first rotation you should raise your ghoul in general, there is a nice little free GCD there for you. Like this:

IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-Raise Ghoul-DC-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-

If you are a creature of habit, or just want to make your life easiest, you can stick with this rotation, and do just fine.

At the beginning of fights you can switch your first rotation around slightly, as follows: Leading with Death Strike will proc Abomination's Might right off the bat, getting it up before making any other attacks. Making your initial rotation:

DS-IT-PS-HS-HS--Raise Ghoul-DC-HS-HS-DS-HS-HS -Dump- then return to:
IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-Raise Ghoul-DC-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-

This is for raid situations where the raid DPS increase from your Abom's Might being up immediately will outweigh your personal DPS loss due to the mechanics of [Glyph of Death Strike]. Since you are using Death Strike first you will have no runic power, and therefore lose out on this bonus. This is only applicable if you don't already have a nonstacking buff like Trueshot Aura.

Rolling Diseases

I'd like to expand this further, so I welcome some more comments. Now that the glyph of disease has been fixed and that disease damage has been increased in 3.2 modifying your rotation to allowing rolling diseases can provide a solid boost to your dps boost. The theory here is that if you can apply your diseases when you have procs up (Greatness, FC, etc.) the disease damage will be higher, and using glyph of disease you can keep them applied at this higher rate, the longer you can maintain them the higher the overall dps increase.

Since you will typically get a Greatness/FC proc at the beginning of a fight, one solution would be to modify your open rotation to start with DS, and then apply your diseases with the procs up. Since it is currently correct to apply diseases with your DRW up, you would want to try to roll your diseases until the first time you DRW, at which time you would use Hysteria in conjunction with your procs. This would be the level at which you would want to maintain your diseases for the rest of the fight.

If you have any figures on this topic please PM them to me, and I will be doing some additional research in the coming weeks.

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.

Your DRW checklist looks something like this, in order of importance.

4 Death Runes
On use trinkets
Bloodlust
Hysteria
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.

AoE

Blood isn’t an AoE spec, unless you count 2 mobs as AoE. In most AoE situations like the Arena for Thorim, I have simply found adding Pestilence to spread my diseases, then Heart Striking out DPSs trying to use Blood Boil. The main occasion on which I find myself using Blood Boil is on Freya’s adds when she spawns the ring of Lashers. This is because you really need to bring them down evenly to be successful.

Otherwise if you really have a lot of mobs, I think I’ve noticed around 5-6 mobs BB begins to outperform HS. In that case you would simply use the
IT-PS-Pest-DnD-Dump-DS-DS-HS…. Rotation.

Both Frost and Unholy are much better AoE specs, which is why I really don’t feel you should be focusing on it as a Blood DK, but I welcome anyone’s comments on AoE if you have differing opinions.

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.

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.

V. TAKING ADVANTAGE OF AMS

Darkside did such a great job of explaining this for frost DKs so most of this is a reprint of his comments. Note that while Blood does not have the extreme need for RP like Frost does, it is still a valuable resource, and you should always be looking for ways to maximize it, especially in situations before you are going to DRW

Trial of the Crusader

This is still new, and I will put in my thoughts from the fights we've done, and incorporate any suggestions. This section subject to a lot of change.

Northrend Beasts
There are some explosions during P1 that you can soak some RP from, this is a standard tank and spank, so there aren't a ton of very useful times to use AMS. In P2 (not one, but TWO jormungars) I would save AMS for when you get a cluster of fire debuffs. This can happen on a few occasions, and will provide you with plenty of RP, and take a little pressure off of your healers. I can't say for certain whether or not AMS will save you from frost breath in P3, if someone gets conclusive results.

Lord Jaraxxus
If your guild uses the strategy of "sit in the flames" for the fire trail debuff you will probably want to hold onto your AMS in case you should get it. Otherwise the best time to use it would be when infernals are close.

Ulduar

Blizzard has provided us with an abundance of AoE magic damage on nearly every fight in Ulduar. Through clever timing, you can use Anti-Magic Shell to produce an abundance of RP every 45s.

Here is a breakdown on each boss encounter in Ulduar, with notes on when it is best to use AMS

Flame Leviathan
n/a

Razorscale
P1: Run through a fire patch on your way over to Razorscale after she's been harpooned.
P2: There is usually a flame patch in the near vicinity of the boss, simply hop in that every 45s.

Ignis
Simply time AMS for use right after he finishes his Flame Jets cast. Know that if you use AMS before the cast is finished you won't receive the debuff and will therefore generate far less RP than you could otherwise. Additionally, you want to start burning RP as soon as you start gaining it, or you will quickly become capped, and waste the extra RP from AMS.

XT
If you feel like playing risky and enjoy pissing your healers off, you can elect to follow a light-bombed melee as they run out of the group. Otherwise, save AMS for when you get bombed.

Kologarn
Wait until Shockwave comes off of cool down then, pop AMS and pray that he uses the ability within 5s seconds (he usually does).

Assembly of Iron
Steelbreaker: The High Voltage aura makes this fight one of the best for consist RP generation through AMS. Simply use AMS every time it is off cooldown and enjoy the free damage.
Molgriem:You'll have to wait for a Rune of Death on the melee group and use AMS as you leave.
Brundir: Lightning Tendrils is the best source of reliable magic damage. You can also take advantage of Overload, though know that you will suffer a 2s knockdown. Since it typically takes a second or two to get back in, this is pretty much a wash.

Auriaya
Wait for a fear and then dance through a void zone on your way back to the melee clump.

Hodir
Save AMS for Frozen Blows. Real ballers can also get 2-3 stacks of Biting Cold at the same time, though your healers will complain, as will the rest of your raid for ruining their achievement!

Thorim
P1: Wait for a Stormhammer cast and hope that you're standing near the target.
P2: Instead of moving out, just sit in and soak the Lightning Charges.

Freya
P1: Sunbeam, if you can move close enough to the target in a timely fashion. There's also Nature's Fury.
P2: Not much, as the bombs will tend to blow you away from the boss and should thus be avoided.

Mimiron
P1: Find an isolated land mine and trigger it on your way back to the boss from a Shock Blast.
P2: Use AMS immedietly after you see Heat Wave pulse to make your healers happier.
P3: Bomb bot explosions are the only source of magic damage.
P4: Use AMS whenever it is off cooldown. Odds are, you will be targeted by Hand Pulse sometime during the duration.

Due to having to weave in and out a lot on the Mimiron encounter, this is a great fight to try to maximize your RP through AMS, additionally there are lots of way to die, so avoiding death is always your greatest DPS gain!

Vezax
This is the only fight in Ulduar without reliable AoE magic damage.

Yogg-Saron
P1: If your guild elects to tank all the guardians in the center, you can use AMS to soak their detonations.
P2: There is lots of shadow damage if you're in the portal group (hint: you should be) from Grim Reprisal.
P3: Nothing here, as you should not be getting hit with Lunatic Gaze.

VI. GEARING AND STATS WEIGHTS

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 the currently accepted stat weights for Blood DKs, thanks to Methods for his outstanding work with DK stat equivalencies!

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

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 from Ulduar. 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. Once we reach a better statis I will update this post with what is determined to be the best set of gear.

Gear Lists will also be uploaded once the approximate weightings have been sorted out. For now, it is probably best to refer to the Optimal gearing: the BiS thread.

One of the current discussions is regarding an inflection point between STR and ArP. It has been currently theorized that once you exceed 6200 AP the APE for ArP will exceed that of STR. Making it proper at that point to start gemming for ArP. The math and sims behind this theory seem solid, and personally once I hit around 6300 AP raid buffed began switching some gems, with positive results thus far.

Set Bonuses

These are the relative weights of the set bonuses for Blood DKs, as always thanks to Methods for providing these.

Blood set bonus weights:

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

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.

[Sigil of the Vengeful Heart] becomes the 2nd best, with [Sigil of Awareness] third. With the cost of only 20 [Emblem of Triumph] there is no reason not to get the [Sigil of Virulence]

VII. 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.

VIII. Macros
Dancing Rune Weapon:

#showtooltip Dancing Rune Weapon
/cast [target=player] Dancing Rune Weapon

Casting DRW on a Mob causes it to spawn in front of the Mob, whereas casting it targeting yourself causes it to spawn on top of you, who will ideally be standing behind the mob. The difference in DPS in small, but every bit counts.

Huge Burst Macro

#show Blood Fury
/use 10
/use Potion of Speed
/cast [target=player] Hysteria
/cast Blood Fury
/cast [target=player] Dancing Rune Weapon

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, and finally summon your DRW

Mind Freeze Focus

#showtooltip Mind Freeze
/cast [target=focus,exists] Mind Freeze;Mind Freeze

For pesky interrupt fights

IX. WWS Parses

One of the most common questions people ask is "How much DPS should I be doing on XXX Boss fight?" I figured a useful tool to answer this question would be some of my personal WWS parses. I do all our guild's WWS recording and a lot of analysis to help both other players and myself. So take a peek at my armory, and if you have have better gear your dps should be higher, etc.

25 Man Ulduar 5/28
XT Custom Split for entire fight
XT First Heart Phase - Burst example custom split

More to come...

X. 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.

XI. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

XII. Still to Come

Things I am still working on adding:

Guide for high burst DPS situations, ie Heart Phase of XT
Proper uses of DRW, timing, cooldowns, etc.
Addon links

XIII. 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

Special Thanks to Darkside(Kroot) for so much of the useful information he pulled together for his Frost Post, and for his permission to copy a lot of his work in an attempt to consolidate information for all of us Blood DKs! Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the information contained in this post, and your patience is appreciated as some rough edges get smoothed out, and new information gets added!

• Darkside · 05/30/09, 2:19 AM

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.

• Soilantgreen64 · 05/30/09, 2:25 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 05/30/09, 2:47 AM

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 · 05/30/09, 6:07 AM

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 · 05/30/09, 8:48 AM

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 · 05/30/09, 10:19 AM

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 · 05/30/09, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 05/30/09, 11:22 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 05/30/09, 1:40 PM

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 · 05/30/09, 2:52 PM

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 · 05/30/09, 4:42 PM

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.

Joshyboy · 05/30/09, 5:46 PM

Originally Posted by 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 similiar with both rotations. I cut out Deathcoils to maximize testing results. What it basically boils down to is a deathstrike vs diseases. 7 Heartstrikes and 2 Deathstrike vs 6 Heartstrike, 1 Deathstrike, 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.

Usage of Ghoul, and AtoD wasn't disccussed in the orginal 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.

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

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

kelben · 05/30/09, 6:26 PM

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.

Kaejin · 05/30/09, 7:56 PM

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 · 05/30/09, 8:26 PM

Originally Posted by kelben

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.

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 · 05/30/09, 8:48 PM

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.

Originally Posted by Orlgin

I don't think this is a bug either. It's telling how awful DRW has become.

Look at the Death Coil percentages and you figure out what happened: Death Coil damage percentage went up 2% when you didn't have DRW and had a point in Impurity. Instead of putting the runic power in DRW, it fired more Death Coils instead. Due to it's small duration and only 814 damage a hit, the Death Coils were competitive enough that adding one talent point's worth of DPS put Death Coil over the top.

If there is a bug, it's in the DRW damage calculation. But like I said, I don't think this is a bug.

zuubtastic · 05/30/09, 9:18 PM

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 · 05/30/09, 9:30 PM

Originally Posted by 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?

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

Originally Posted by kelben

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.

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 · 05/30/09, 9:38 PM

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

Kaejin · 05/30/09, 9:38 PM

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 · 05/30/09, 9:58 PM

Originally Posted by kelben

I think I figured out my own answer to the question of DRW buffage, DRW does exactly 50% of the dmg you do

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 · 05/30/09, 11:04 PM

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 · 05/31/09, 12:59 PM

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 · 05/31/09, 3:56 PM

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.