Currently my HS crit for around 2.500 more with two diseases up compared to no diseases up. In my book this is a big thing.

ok no one bite my head off plz...but for every other spec they always use PS before IT...is there a reason why in Blood we are switching it up?

Because there's no advantage for Blood to use PS first.

In Unholy you have Rage of Rivendare, and in Frost you have Glacier Rot.

In Blood, you have nothing.

Mainly because you can use IT before you are in melee range...ie as you are running in. Once you are in melee range, I'm not sure that it makes any differance (correct me if I'm wrong).

I don't think anyone uses PS-IT over IT-PS in practice though. It's false economy to delay your first rune by 1 GCD just so you get an extra 10% damage or whatever on IT. Unless it's something like Mimiron you're never going to start on top of the boss so IT first is always more beneficial.

Right. It's wasting time when you could start your rotation one GCD earlier by using IT on your way to the boss.

As for Frost and UH, once you get past the initial application of diseases, it doesn't matter what order you apply them so long as you don't let them fall off. This issue is also much less relevant now that IT is weaker than it used to be and PS stronger.

You have to also factor in things like Shadow of Doom talent and the fact that the Vengeful Heart sigil is also bis for blood, if you add all of those factors up then I have a feeling DRW is gonna get dropped from cookie cutter builds.

Forgetting the math the only fights I can think of where DRW would definitley be ahead are ones where you need controlled burst, the obvious one being XT.

Keep in mind that that 15% will probably be even higher, given that you're saving about 1.11 rp/s that you'd otherwise spend on your rune weapons.. and that the cookie cutter blood build ( at least in the OP ) takes 2/3 morbidity, which would probably be shifted to something like 3/3 morbidity and 4/5 necrosis or something in a 50/0/21 build.

I'd be interested to see a model put together for the way Unholy Blight will act. They said it should act like scorch, which makes things interesting. Something like this:

Death Coil avg. dmg for me is about 5.1k, 42% of 5.1k is 2142 damage over 10 seconds, or 214 dmg a tick.

If you max out at 100 rp you can do two death coils, resulting in 418 dmg a tick for around 8 seconds taking a GCD into account. Then it'd be a question of how fast you can generate RP to continue to stack on the dot before the first death coil falls off.

If you could stack 5, if even for two seconds, before the first stack drops off you'd be at 1070 dmg a tick for two ticks, 856 for another two, and then the possibility of reapplying another death coil.

I tried finding a mage's scorch calculator to no avail.

My understanding is that ("ignite munching" bug aside), the ignite ability now does exactly 40% of the spell's damage in two two-second ticks, but that the first tick can be pushed back by quick back to back crits. The rolling ignite and similar exploits don't exist today. It's safe to assume that with glyphed UB your death coils will do 42% more damage on mobs that live over 10 seconds and leave it at that.

We don't have to be concerned with the "blight munching" bug, as death coil doesn't have a cast time and is restricted by the GCD.

Depending on how often the UB DoT ticks, we may be well served by not shooting off two death coils in quick succession so the first tick isn't delayed. If it ticks every second, that won't be an issue.

Keep in mind with Sudden Doom you can get really RNG lucky and have multiple DCs go off, not just 2 in a row. I would imagine that the numbers will probably need tweaking before 3.2 finally hits. From a design standpoint I don't see Blizzard allowing a 21 pt talent to outdamage a 51 pt talent. Speaking of which, as far as I could determine the main reason DRW was changed the way it was when 3.1 hit was that there were a few Blood PVP builds where the old DRW on the 3 min cooldown would basically destroy a low armor target. So halving the damage and cooldown was an effort to make it less bursty. I would expect to see some buffs to DRW if UB looks like it out performs it by a significant margin.

Heart strike respects the GCD, so you can't proc a sudden doom DC simultaneously with a manually casted DC. That's what causes the "munching" bug.

If the DoT ticks every second, there's no reason to delay between DCs. Dump that RP. If it ticks every 2 seconds, casting two DCs in two GCDs won't actually hurt your damage as it's properly "banked", but it will delay the first tick by one GCD, which is not optimal.

How is that not optimal? Unless the boss is <10s from death, delaying the dot will have no effect on your overall damage, so long as it is eventually dealt.

Also note that the Blood Strike change has to be taken into account regarding the strength of DRW. Currently Blood Strike + Glyph is almost equivalent to Heart Strike, save for hitting only one target. Therefore, so long as the bonus per disease on Blood Strike is 25% or more, it will be better DPS in any situation where only one target is available without the glyph.

Depending on whether it proves worthwhile to use diseases to buff a Blood Strike using DRW, this could swing the situation further toward UB or away. If UB proves clearly superior it would be surprising if Blizzard did nothing to make DRW more desirable.

Edit: Regarding the Blood Strike change specifically, I've done some math and found that as long as Blizzard increases the baseline per/disease bonus at all it will be a significant DPS increase to use the Blood Strike glyph over any of the other three currently used glyphs (assuming you have the appropriate triggers). Note that this applies to single targets only.

First, here are the basic equations for the damage of each ability:

The damage for both abilities is equally multiplied by the talents Bloody Strikes (1.45%), Dark Vengeance (1.09%), Might of Mograine (+45% Crit Damage) and Blood Gorged(1.10%).

Looking at this parse that Daeren linked earlier, we can roughly calculate the DPS increase of Blood Strike versus Heart Strike, and also the potential DPS value of the Blood Strike glyph.

HS Average: 5670
3.2 BS Projected Average (Unglyphed/Glyphed): 7847.8/9417.3
DPS Increase: 715 (Glyph: +515 = 1230)

Blizzard has already said that their internal notes show the BS disease bonus has having been reduced, so we won't be seeing this kind of ridiculous increase. Let's assume that the increase is +25% per disease instead.

3.2 BS Revised Average: 5727.8/6873.3
DPS Increase: 19 (Glyph: +376 = 395)

In this case Blood Strike alone wouldn't prove an amazing DPS increase, but the Glyph presents a rather large jump in damage. In comparison the approximate DPS values for the DC, DS, and DRW glyphs for this fight were 92.7, 105.8, and 87.8 respectively. As long as the conditions to activate the Blood Strike glyph were present, it would be 3-4 times as good as any of these.

According to the following rough calculation, Glyphed Blood Strike will be 50 DPS better than any alternative glyph so long as the per/disease bonus is increased by as little as 1.14%. (Weapon damage is assumed to be 2770, and the crit damage scaling is assumed to be 1.555, both based roughly on the parse).

(50% + 368) * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.09 * 1.45 * 1.555 - (40% + 305.6) * (1 + X% * 2) * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.09 * 1.45 * 1.555 = 150
((50% + 368) - (40% + 305.6) * (1 + X% * 2)) * 3.2441343 = 150
(1385 + 368) - (1108 + 305.6) * (1 + X% * 2) = 46.24
1753 - 1413.6 * (1 + X% * 2) = 46.24
1753 - 1413.6 - 1413.6 * 2 * X% = 46.24
339.4 - 2827.2 * X% = 46.24
385.64 = 2827.2 * X%
13.64% = X%

Essentially, as long as Blizzard holds to their current tack of altering the per/disease bonus Blood will have a noticeable DPS increase. I suspect that Blizzard may change/remove the Blood Strike glyph in order to compensate for this.

Exactly how I read it, if it's anything like ignite (which it's supposed to be). Each DC simply gets a % of it's damage as UB, and it rolls over the previous UB tick, not resetting it, just adding to it.

However.... assuming a tick every 2 sec.... if you crit a DC for 6k and get 40% UB stack - 2400 over 10 sec, 480 tick/2 sec - and 6 sec go by (1440 dmg done), then crit again for 6k, you'll then reset the timer, and have a 960 tick/2 sec for 10 secs, right?

so instead of 4800 damage total from 40% of 12k, you'd get 480*3+960*5 = 1440+4800 = 6240

Isn't that how it works? Or does the first stack expire after 10 sec?

I'm not following you on the 25% bonus per disease. Currently BS is only 12.5%. Post 3.2 this will go up to 18.75% (.125 * 1.5). I'm figuring the patch notes meant that the damage bonus for each disease is being increased by 50% instead of to 50%. Even with that buff why would Blood Strike be superior to Heart Strike during DRW's up time given that both abilities cost 1 Blood rune each? In my view a Blood DK shouldn't be caught dead using Blood Strike. The buff appears to compensate for debuffs in Frost and Unholy only.

EDIT: After viewing your math I understand what you mean by the 25% bonus. Though to my understanding Glyph of Blood Strike still effects Heart Strike as well. Assuming that is the case wouldn't HS remain the superior between the two?

Not as of patch 3.1. Patch 3.1.0 - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

* Heart Strike: Bonus damage for diseases is now a multiplier rather than a flat bonus. No longer affected by [Glyph of Blood Strike].


edit: Never mind the bottom edit, I'm math stupid

So at this point are we theorizing that there will be two separate rotations for Blood DPS? One rotation using Heart Strike for trash and another rotation using Blood Strike for bosses? If the changes go through as is would there be any reason to use Heart Strike at all?

I disagree that no assumptions can be made. We can, for example, assume that there will be an increase to the disease bonus on Blood Strike in the first iteration of the 3.2 PTR. Ghostcrawler said as much. We can't assume what the exact increase will be, save for the purposes of purely hypothetical theorycraft.

From that assumption, we can see that the implications of my math mean it is extremely likely, almost certain given our current information, that Blood Strike + Glyph will be better than Heart Strike for single target DPS in the first iteration of the 3.2 PTR.

Heart Strike will remain better than Blood Strike in any situation where you can hit multiple targets. Somewhere between 3-6 targets Blood Boil will be better than Heart Strike in a multi-target situation. There are enough situations where Heart Strike is useful, and few talents worth dropping the point for, such that I don't feel it will be dropped entirely.

Regarding the UB dot, would the dot be doing exactly 42% of the damage of the DC, or would it double-dip into damage talents/abilities and be doing much more (double dipping into 13% spell damage, Blood Presence, and the deeper unholy talents for UH builds etc).

I would imagine design wise they wouldn't allow it to do this as it would put UB pretty high up in terms of talent point / damage investment.

Please delete. Bad Gateway error apparently caused double post.

I imagine ( at least in theory ) for the same reason unholy wouldn't use obliterate and frost wouldn't use death coil? Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you're saying.