Blood Simple - The Day The Music Died - Page 2

Soilantgreen64 · 05/30/09, 7:26 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, 7:48 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, 8:18 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, 8:30 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, 8:38 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, 8:38 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, 8:58 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, 10:04 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, 11:59 AM

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, 2:56 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.

Leaflock · 05/31/09, 3:20 PM

Originally Posted by raledon

Since our rune weapons does 50% of our damage

This is incorrect and shouldn't be repeated any more-- not sure where it's coming from.

The bulk of DRW's damage is from its regular melee swings-- a DRW white attack will hit twice as hard as a DRW Heart Strike. That's why it's important to stack DRW with any available haste-- Bloodlust/Heroism, Potion of Speed, etc. Similarly, Hysteria benefits DRW tremendously.

As Soilantgreen is pointing out, DRW is all about packing as many hard hitting attacks as possible into your 15 second window. While your DRW will put up full duration diseases and I believe its Heart Strikes will benefit from its own diseases (the issue pre-3.1 was that DRW's OB would remove DRW's diseases, even if you had Annihilation), the total damage of DRW's dots is pretty pitiful. I've tried both methods pretty extensively in raids, and maximizing HS + DS + DC during DRW seems to have the best results, particularly if you use Empower Rune Weapon to avoid wasting any GCDs while DRW is up.

Rhuu · 05/31/09, 5:31 PM

I never quite understood the 4 Death Rune rule when using DRW. By the time you have 4 Death Runes available, your disease durations are righr around 8 seconds (with 1/2 Epidemic). DRW eats a GCD so before you can start HS spam you're now down to 6.5 seconds. Your diseases will fall off (with 1/2 Epidemic) right around your third HS (if latency is on your side you can get it off right before diseases fade), leaving yourself with 3 diseaseless Heart Strikes (4 if you Blood Tap; more if you ERW).

Is it really more DPS in the long run to eat those 3+ diseaseless Heart Strikes? I also see 2/2 Epidemic only benefiting the 4x Death Rune situation-I personally don't run into too many situations where I need those extra 3 seconds to finish my rotations.

Grondarg · 05/31/09, 6:45 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.

There is something not quite right about how the sims calculate the bonus from Impurity. I brought it up in Kahorie's thread and he checked the calculations and couldn't find any issue. So I ran a 50/0/21 impurity build for 2 weeks. I couldn't find demonstrative proof that it was better so I switched back. I should have a 51/0/20 log on tuesday night to compare with my 50/0/21 run from last week.

Joshyboy · 05/31/09, 7:30 PM

I have a question to put to you gentlemen.
I've personally been using Glyph of Death strike , Glyph of Dark Death and instead of the more standard Glyph of DRW I've been using the Glyph of Blood Strike, I know Its different, but I don't use DRW half as much as I probably should, as you know Glyph of Blood strike increases damage done by Heart Strike as well. But the question I'm putting to you Is whether you know If Snare effects have to actually be effective for it to work? For instance a mage's frost fire bolt has a snare effect as do many classes, so does simply having these debuffs up on a mob actually activate the glyph or do the effects need to be effective?

richard · 05/31/09, 7:38 PM

Originally Posted by Joshyboy

as you know Glyph of Blood strike increases damage done by Heart Strike as well.

From the 3.1 patch notes:

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

But to answer your question, anything that reduces movement speed and leaves a debuff will work with the glyph. Note that it's different from the mage talent where it can be attack speed reductions as well.