It is interesting that the Blood Strike disease 50% bonus did make it onto the current PTR build. My only guess is they are pushing blood to have a single target versus multi target abilities with bloodstrike and heartstrike respectively. With talents blood strike is 58% weapon dmg + change and heart strike is 72% weapon dmg + change undiseased. With 2 diseases up that comes to 116% dmg + change versus 86.4% + change. Add the blood strike glyph thats another 20% coming to a grand total of 139%. With the 4 piece t8 bonus the disease bonus becomes 60% per disease (extra 20% of the disease bonus) so with the glyph the grand total comes to 153.12% dmg + change. Unless they've changed the base weapon damage of blood strike it seems we might be going to crazy town with these new numbers, and if we can get the glyph to work. Even without the glyph though, I think the disease bonus alone makes bloodstrike more desirable over heart strike in all single target situations. Also then the debate becomes what glyph to replace the blood strike glyph with.

I'm waiting for the PTR copies to go up but if this change makes it to live things will certainly be interesting.

its the very same build that i suggested earlier in the thread but with 2 points in Imp. UP instead of full Crypt Fever (which should be better than the alternatives)

Taken from MMO-Champion, datamined information on the new DPS Sigil with 3.2 content.

I'm assuming Death Strike will get added to said list, depending on the % chance and ICD that's going to be a pretty heavily favoured Sigil for Blood DK's.


Also speaking of Strength procs, further datamined information brings up this trinket effect.

DMC Greatness just got outshined.

Wierd BS spam specs like 31/0/40 are the best by far at the moment, but that will change for sure.

I wonder if Paragon and Greatness share an internal CD. We're talking about a lot of strength when you put those two together with the t9 two piece and new sigil (assuming DS is added to it).

Which value are you using? It looks like the mined BS has 25% per disease.

A 23/48/0 build looks promising. It will have stronger Blood Strikes than the Unholy versions, FS over DC, and DW. The Chilblains, Hungering Cold, and Rune tap are all filler. You could take 4/5 toughness for the slight dps gain. Does Chilblains work for Glyph of Blood Strike?
Glyphs are also iffy with OB being another choice.


Albeit this type of build has been my own secret wish since leveling in Outlands but now it may prove to be a top build.
BS will be at 104.3% weapon damage weapon damage vs the 101.5% in the UH build(both not accounting for glyph) , as well as retaining its 2.45 crit modifier. Currently HS has the same 104.3% weapon damage if you don't account for two hand weapon spec (I'm not accounting for that since it is unknown whether nerves of cold steel will work with strikes, I expect it will in which case the effective 5% increase will outweigh 4%). A build with dual focus on both FS and BS will be interesting, especially in finding the right balance between them. The only issue would be the short duration diseases.

If they remove the Blood Strike glyph it will have the same scaling as Heart Strike. This is a possibility. There will almost certainly be some change though.

Ferals already have such a talent (for their bleeds). Rets will also get a bonus that makes the Righteous Vengeance DoT crit (it is about a 150 dps increase for a normal Ulduar-25 Ret). It is based of your melee crit.

DKs will get more an increase due to the increased scaling of the DoTs in 3.2 and having two DoTs.

So im unsure of the numbers here as I am not raiding on my DK but a thought crossed my mind about the new Unholy Blight. Does anyone have any idea of the difference (Gain or Loss) between taking the conventional 51/0/20 build, or dropping DRW and picking up UB in unholy (50/0/21). Considering the buff to UB on Death Coils, and the procs from Sudden Doom. I am uncertain of the best glyphs for this spec so i went with the Death strike,UB, and dark death glyphs. There dont seem to be a lot of good Deep blood glyphs besides DS and DRW, so im double dipping on the Death coil related Glyphs since dropping DRW.

Like I said, i dont really know the numbers and i am possibly leaning towards it being a dps loss by doing this, assuming that you use your DRW on every CD, and assuming you have a good iLevel weapon, say 226 and upwards. But if anyone has a clue I would really like to hear from the raiding DK's.

Regaring 3.2 and HS<-> BS:

I testet it on dummy.

After 60 BS or HS, i had average damage about (noncrit/crit):
HS 4300/10100
BS(unglyphed) 4000/9000

So i am pretty sure, that BS>HS with BS glyph. We may reconsidering using it. Assuming, it still gives 20% to snared targets, we would land at 4800/10800, a single target increase about 10+%.

Are you sure that BS isn't scaling at 50% per disease still? They may have hotfixed it in, I haven't really tested, but the tooltip still reads 50%.

Which glyph would you drop though?

Logic to me says dropping DRW glyph, but wouldn't that just put DRW worse than UB?

If BS scales at 50% per disease then its damage should be noticeably higher than HS. It would take some obscene RNG for 80% Weapon Damage + 711.2 to average less than 60% Weapon Damage + 441.6. While Bonecaller's tests weren't that vigorous, they strongly indicate that the tooltip is inaccurate.

Edit : nwm miss reading

Treat tooltips like ex-wives.

This. Will a 10% increase in BS damage outweigh the loss of one of our existing glyphs? All of them are pretty darn useful.

Also, keep in mind this isn't a guaranteed bonus. You'd have to make sure some kind of snare is on the target at all times. If it isn't, you're not only dealing less damage than you would with HS but you're missing a glyph too.

Aside from FFB, what snares do we have to work with? None of the mages in my guild are Frostfire anymore.

The debuff would only need to be on the target, correct? Wouldn't Infected Wounds and/or Concussive Shot work?

BS still uses the +50% bonus damage per disease for me on PTR, and HS is bugged in relation to BS :

Some data from the PTR using [Large Club] without any weapon enchant nor proc trinket to have a perfectly stable AP (a premade was used).

PTR 0 disease
HS : 1258 hit - 3191 crit
BS : 1018 hit - 2591 crit
DS : 1294 hit - 3281 crit

PTR 1 disease
HS : 1852 hit - 4723 crit
BS : 1634 hit - 4140 crit
DS : 1293 hit - 3281 crit

PTR 2 diseases
HS : 2465 hit - 6253 crit
BS : 2246 hit - 5700 crit
DS : 1293 hit - 3282 crit

BS 1 disease / BS 0 disease = *1.6
BS 2 diseases / BS 0 disease = *2.2
HS 1 disease / HS 0 disease = *1.48
HS 2 disease / HS 0 disease = *1.96

So we can see that BS has a +60% damage bonus per disease, (+50%*1.2 from 4pt8), and HS as a +48% damage bonus per disease (+40%*1.2 from 4pt8).

Live HS bonus dmg per disease is +10%, and BS is +12.5%.
PTR HS bonus dmg per disease is +40% and BS is +50%
12.5/10 = 50/40, so it seems that BS and HS are still linked somewhere in blizzard's code :x

But if we correct the damage we can see that a BS crit with 4pt8 and 2 diseases up would do 2591*1+(0.25*1.2*2) = 4195 dmg where HS would do 3191*1+(0.1*1.2*2) = 3957

I was using a 1.6dps 2h, but i don't see why HS would scale better than BS with a 250dps and raid buffs.
Some calculation :

HS base damage = (50% weapon damage + 368) * (1+(disease count * 0.1))
PTR BS base damage = (40% weapon damage + 305.6) * (1+(disease count * 0.25))

HS damage with Bloody Strikes = (72.5% weap dmg + 533.6) * 1.2 = 87% weap dmg + 640.32
BS damage with Bloody Strikes = (58% weap dmg + 443.12) * 1.5 = 87% weap dmg + 664.68

HS damage with Bloody Strikes and 4pt8 = (72.5% weap dmg + 533.6) * 1.24 = 89.9% weap dmg + 661.664
BS damage with Bloody Strikes and 4pt8 = (58% weap dmg + 443.12) * 1.6 = 92.8% weap dmg + 708.992

Assuming 7000 average AP, 250 dps 3.4 speed weapon, 50% average crit on HS and BS abilities, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, Blood Gorged, Bloody Vengeance stacked at 3, and a boss armor that reduce damage by 30% (we have a some armor pen) :
Without 4pt8 :
BS Hit Gain = 24.36*1.1*1.09*1.04*0.7 = 21,26316192
BS Crit Gain = BS Hit Gain * 2.45 * 1.03 = 53,65758910512
BS Avg Gain = 37,46037551256 per land
In a 6hs/bs rotation per 20s, it's a barely 11dps increase

With 4pt8 :
BS Hit Gain = ((7000/14*3.3 + 250*3.4) * 0.029 + 47.328)*1.1*1.09*1.04*0.7 = 104,594506016
BS Crit Gain = BS Hit Gain * 2.45 * 1.03 = 263,944235931376
BS Avg Gain = 184,269370973688 per land
In a 6hs/bs rotation per 20s, it's a 55dps increase which is better, but useless because in 3.2 t9 will be the main used set in 1 or 2 monthes.

If blizzard wants us to use BS over HS in a single target situation, either they have to up BS a little more, or to nerf HS.

They don't. Any DKs who made use of the Blood Strike glyph previously will use it again, affording an extra 20% damage to their Blood Strikes. In one of my previous posts I analyzed a WMO parse and showed that the Blood DK in question would gain 300 DPS by using Blood Strike (+25% per disease) and its glyph over Heart Strike and another glyph. I did assume 100% uptime on triggers for the glyph, but even if the effects were present 50% of the time it would still be a sizable DPS upgrade.

If Blizzard really wants to cement Blood Strike as the single target ability of choice, all they need to do is make the Blood Strike glyph function the same as the Arcane Torment the Weak talent.

But there's a question unasked, is Blood currently in a situation which requires such a significant DPS buff? Ignoring for the moment the issues of DRW vs UB and speculative Blood Strike spam builds, is there a gap between Blood and other DK DPS, or between DKs and other hybrid classes?

I didn't take into account the Blood Strike glyph because i'm pretty sure blizzard will change it.

They cannot make BS even to HS and then let this glyph remains as it while buffing diseases by 15% (1% more dps) and buffing drw (17s assured uptime for 60 fixed rp). It would be a too much single target dps increase (at least 6-7% accounting the ~2% nerf by replacing the drw/dd/ds glyph), depending on the fact that a slow debuff is present on the boss, while not really affecting it (which is a prettry odd mechanic imho).

On an encounter like XT HM (probably the nearest true single target dps boss), that would bump blood dk's dps at the same level as current ferals's and rogues's (7k5+ if bis ulduar 25 hm).

Note : Current dk's at 7k5+ on wmo xt002 hm parses generaly does 300-600 dps on life sparks with HS,

Given that HS appears heavily buffed as well...it sounds like they still intend for the 41 point talents to function as strike replacements...

It appears to be unintentionall since there would be no need to buff HS ( as i've understood it the buff to BS is to account for the nerf to FS and SS).

HOWEVER since BS is now more on par with HS thus making it a non-mandatory talent the afore mentioned 31/0/39 +1 spec comes into play, bringing mainly Perma-Ghoul and a third disease and with them we can see something intresting happening with BS. It will instead of recieving a x1,5 multiplier ( assuming 25% per desease ) gain 1,75 which would edge it out more when pitted against HS.

Therefore the HS buff may be intended to keep builds like these from happening.

Also I would not want to think about how insane 31/0/39 + 1 builds will be if BS will actually keep 50% desease bonus. A x2,5 multiplier seems to be extremely OP. The only thing I can see as viable would be a nerf to BS ( 25% as mentioned before) and a normal HS ( 10% ) and if HS indeed keeps its 40% per disease a BS build would still be better and even more so with the glyph.

Hm, I disagree - my XT 25 HM parse from last night was just under 7.4k DPS, and only had 75k dmg to sparks - which works out to around 150 dps or so. I see some improvements that could be made from my parse as well - AOTD wasn't up for heart phase and I got a little sloppy with rotations and one point, as well as being out of range of moonkin aura.


WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay


If HM General or heck even XT10 HM decide to drop their sword, along with a few more upgrades I'll be pushing 7.5k on XT HM along with the feral's and rogues you're mentioning. Maybe this week will be my lucky week and I'll get an upgrade (been killing XT10 HM since nerf and still no Aesir's edge, although post-nerf I've seen about 20 different people running around with 1 or, in the case of a few fury warriors, two of them).