AtheistGod

What I meant is that any specific assumptions should not be made. Yes the assumption that blood strike will be buffed can be, but that it is too vague for the way it was being handled. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to see a buff to both Blood Strike and Heart Strike and a nerf to Bloody Strikes to keep Heart Strike on top for blood while buffing Blood Strike for the other specs. It could be we get a small buff. We may be unchanged. We could be using Blood Strike over Heart Strike. There are too many paths in which blood strike can be buffed for us to automatically know which one is in 3.2.

The main buff Heart Strike gives right now is that it gets the 20% damage buff without needing the glyph and the target to be snared. In terms of raw single target damage it is worth little more than a glyph.It is so close to BS because every talent that buffs it also buffs BS. the talents buffing FS do not buff DC and the talents buffing SS do not buff OB. The balance between BS and HS is much more fragile. Even right now BS will scale better on single targets if you have the glyph and t8 4pc. Thus a buff that isn't balanced between BS and HS perfectly will cause BS to come out far enough ahead.

 

Yubble

if this new UB is comparable to Ignite, it will NOT double dip from other effects/talents/debuffs. It's purely and simply a % of the DC's damage.

 

conwolv

Coming back to the ArP conversation in this thread. Has anyone come back with a magic number for when ArP becomes a better gem stat than Str?

I had been running the 51/0/20 spec outlined in the thread, with gear that affords me about 47% ArP when gemmed. I re-gemmed lastnight back to Str and lost a about 20% of my overall DPS from my personal experiences. Unfortunately I do not currently have any WWS reports to help parse the overall changes in DPS I was seeing, but the DPS was indeed quite a bit different.

I ask about ArP numbers, because other DKs in my guild are looking at my DPS (normally on top around 4k+ on a bad night) and asking how they can do the same.

Thoughts?

 

Kaejin

I went from doing DPS in the lower 4k range one week to doing dps in the mid 5k range the next week with the only changes in my gear being:

[Betrayer of Humanity] -> [Rune Edge] (the H:Uld epic, obviously, not this axe)
[Loatheb's Shadow] -> [Mjolnir Runestone]
[Chestplate of Titanic Fury] -> [Conqueror's Darkruned Battleplate]

I didn't regem my other gear, change my spec, glyphs, rotation, or anything. Our raid comp is also consistent.

Tell them to upgrade their weapons. It's probably the best thing you can do for DPS.

 

conwolv

Hrm. I think you missed the point of my post.

Upgrading DPS with a few pieces of gear has been and always will be the cornerstone of DPS increases (assuming you get the right gear). However, my re-gemming to ArP after switching lastnight showed me that there is a magic number for when Armor Penetration becomes better to gem for than Str. I wanted to know if anyone found that number yet so I can tell other people who are interested in following with my example.

Telling them "upgrade your gear" is like telling a hungry man to "eat some food" =)

 

Lazareth

The number being thrown around is at around 6200 AP raid buffed.

Holy crap.

 

conwolv

Not Attack Power (AP) but Armor Penetration (ArP).

Attack Power simply does not scale better than Strength at any point (to regem to attack power). Armor Penetration does.

So, anyone who knows what I'm talking about have any ideas?

 

Yubble

heh... wow dude... no offense but you need to read the rest of the thread!

Once you reach about 6200 AP, raid buffed, ArP becomes more valuable then strength.

 

conwolv

Seemed I missed that part of the thread. My apologies.

By that logic, anything less than that, Str is better. Which doesn't support my findings at all.

The way that ArP scales, the More ArP you have, the less AP would be needed for it to be better to Gem for. By re-gemming to Str, I lost between 700-1kdps. The difference was 27% ArP from gear using Str gems to 47% ArP after gemming back. My Raid Buffed AP was about 5k.

So, there's some inconsistencies somewhere.

Can anyone else verify this?

 

Melchior

Pretty sure losing 700-1000 DPS had a lot less to do with you re-gemming anything and more to do with whatever changed from the previous week during the encounter.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Junon.png

 

conwolv

I'll find out tonight. Going to do the same encounter tonight with the same group. But I'm pretty sure that my DPS changes had to do with the changes made to my gems. Pretty low chance my DPS would stay the same making those kinds of big changes. So, they either had to go up or down. They went down. So, tonight, on the new lockout period, I'll run the same encounter (no big changes in the encounter this week). So we'll see what it looks like.

But like I said, I'm pretty sure it was the big changes made to my stats from changing out 8 gems from ArP to Str.

 

concept84

You're not looking at the big picture. You are correct by saying that the value of ArP increases when one gains more ArP due to its scaling, however ArP and its usefulness is directly related to one's AP and to a lesser extent Str (since Str converts to more AP).

ArP removes a certain percentage of Armor, allowing less of your attack to be mitigated by the boss. If your attack hits harder naturally removing the same percentage of mitigation, you will have an even larger hit. Because of this relationship the more AP you have, the more valuable ArP becomes, in addition to being more valuable the more you stack it.

I'll be very honest and tell you that your 1000 dps increase did not come from gaining 20% more ArP. It simply isn't possible for 20% ArP to provide that much of a boost in dps. It is even less likely that if in fact ArP was that good, that we wouldn't have discovered it here already in the blood thread. Myself and a few others have tested ArP vs. Str in real raid situations all the way from 5k AP up to and over 7k AP and almost BiS or BiS Ulduar gear and I've never seen such a margin in dps simply from re-gemming from Str to ArP. In fact I think the ArP vs Str discussion ended here with a finding that a magic number does exist, and that my findings of that number of 6200 AP may be right, but Str and ArP are still too close as far as worth to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt within a real raid situation.

I'm guessing your 1000 dps increase you speak of is most likely better player execution, or boss execution by your raid.

 

Melchior

It's pretty much impossible. The two stats are far too close in value to make a significant difference either way. Even if you are well over the point in raid-buffed AP where ArP is stronger than STR on a per-point basis, it won't be by enough of a margin that you'd see such a significant increase in overall DPS.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Junon.png

 

Afabar

By looking at your armory, you have 9 expertise, and that is very low. One lucky night you can only see a few dodge and the other day RNG is not on your side and you do poor dps. Did you equip defence sigil the day you found you do low dps ?

 

conwolv

Fair enough guys. I trust you've done a lot more math than I could ever hope to.

It just seemed very odd to have the numbers change that much. My DPS was consistent until the night that I changed those gems.

Makes me wonder ultimately what was the cause.

 

dr_AllCOM3

ArP is better until about 420+proc. See my sheet for reference.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Fauh

Looking at the patch notes right now it does seem as BS infact retained 50% increased disease damage and it makes a build like this plausible.

The idea is to buff BS as much as possible and take advandtage of the new UB. ( But mostly just buff BS )

A rotation would be something like:

PS-IT-BS-BS-DS
BS-BS-BS-BS-BS-BS

Dump RP whenever close to the cap. Depending on wether or not we want to take one point out of Hysteria ( took that one for Burst capabilities) and Bone Shield and put them in Imp. Unholy Presence for more GCD's will be subject to further testing

 

conwolv

I'm not sure that Imp UP would be all that helpful in DPS in PvE. It's fantastic for PvP, however from my experience. It's normally better to be in Blood. Imp UP doesn't affect rune cooldowns (AFAIK) while in another Presence. The decreased GCD while in UP wouldnt make up for the loss of the +15% damage from BP.

 

Fauh

Seeing as how many abilities there is to squeeze in in one rotation ( keep in mind that you don't want to let the new UB roll off ) and you don't want runes to wait to long before they are used(3 seconds or something?) you might want to spec into Imp. UH Presence for those extra GCD's. But as I said, it will be subject to testing if its actually needed.

 

dr_AllCOM3

Why should you not want to let UB roll off? It's simply 30% of a DC and the dot is more or less a nice gimmick. Unless I'm vastly mistaken.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Melchior

No, you're correct. It shouldn't matter whether UB falls off or not, because using similar mechanics to Ignite it won't gain any kind of "double-dip" effect from any kind of talent or buff/debuff.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Junon.png

 

Fauh

Ok i might have been mistaken about letting UB roll off then. And if DC's isn't that important (as long as you don't cap out on rp) we should be rolling in BP.

Doesn't anyone have any thought on the spec and rotation itself?


Edit: thinking over the glyphs it might be an idea to change one of them for Glyph of the Ghoul. Just intuitivly it seems as though Glyph of UB is gonna have to go in favor of Ghoul. Especially with the changes to expertise for pets.

 

dr_AllCOM3

Death Knight

* Death Knight T9 Melee 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Your Blood Strike and Heart Strike abilities have a chance to grant you 180 additional strength for 15 sec.
* Death Knight T9 Melee 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Your Frost Fever and Blood Plague abiltiies now have a chance for their damage to be critical strikes.
* Death Knight T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Dark Command ability by 2 sec.
* Death Knight T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Boneshield abilities by 20 sec.

That is unexpecting and interesting.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

conwolv

Wow.

I'm intrigued with the Melee 2/4 piece bonuses and the tank 4pc.

I'm assuming the "chance to crit" will be based off of your crit stat?

I'll have to play around with them on the PTR and see what kind of DPS changes we're looking at from those set bonuses.

 

Apfelkäse

Any thoughts on this blood/unholy build that focuses on alot of blood strikes?
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=10026