My mistake, missed the patch notes
Thanks for that

I wouldn't replace the Greatness with Grim toll, heads up the Greatness is a better trinket, and that's before you even take into consideration that double trinket procs would push you over the 100% ArP cap.

Plus your DPS spikes when Greatness and Runestone overlap will be awesome. As opposed to Runestone and Grim Toll overlapping which would just be sad.

Well, as far I understood the DRW mechanic, it goes like this:
Once used, DRW will take a "snapshot" of your stats, and mimic you. For instance, if you had 6000 ap when you cast it and cast a heart strike later with 5000 ap, the DRW will cast a heart strike with power of 6000 ap. The damage that the said heart strike will cause will be half of what your heart strike will do with 6000 ap.
According to what you say (correct me if I'm wrong), the DRW heart strike will cause over 50% of your damage, while it's dots will cause less than 50%. This is probably incorrect, and I ignored any damage bonus that the DRW might recieve from dots being up, since I'm not entirely sure if it actually recieves them.
Regarding the dots being pitiful, please note that blood diseases ARE pitiful. On the other hand, a full run disease is not so pitiful, since it does 7 times it's ticks damage.

The other major component regarding DRW is the fact that it functions off the same disease mechanics that you as the DK do. That is the primary reason for putting up the diseases first, that and it's free dps even after your DRW duration expires, the dots will still tick to their full duration. If you want to test this try it on a target dummy and review your combat log.

Just for curiosity's sake, does anyone have 4 pc yet and do we know if the 4 pc will affect DRW? I know our 4 pc, like many others, is total crap but it's better than nothing.

Couple of questions (i'm new to blood so this is just in response to what i've read here so far)

First off, as far as rotations and DS concerns, i saw 2 rotations being discussed but what about a compromise between the 2
1. IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-DUMP (diseases 1st, Abom last)
2. DS-IT-PS-HS-HS-DUMP (Abom Might 1st, diseases 2nd)
3. IT-PS-DS-HS-HS-DUMP (compromise, diseases 1st, abom 2nd)
you still get your diseases 1st, have 20RP or so which gives you 20%+ to DS which is just 5% short of the max increase by the Glyph. Also you can still start the fight early with a ranged IT instead of waiting to get to your target before attacking. In fact this means that your DS is delayed by only 1 second (GCD after PS) which i'm sure is acceptable

My other question is about DRW
Tooltip mentions the +1sec for every 10 RP, how is this calculated exactly. Does this mean that in order to maximize duration you have to use DRW when you have 100 RP (which basicaly means after 2 full rotations for the 4 death runes as well)? or can you just start it with 40RP and keep it up with newly generated RP?

I'm also a bit confused about the role Empowered Rune Weapon plays in DRW. Are we talking about burning it before DRW, or having it ready for DRW in order to maximize attacks during that period (which makes more sense to me)

The duration of DRW is only affected by the RP you have when it is spawned, it does not work like gargoyle. Your RP is spent when it is cast, and that determines how long it lasts

You would burn ERW after you cast DRW and have used all your available runes, so you are always striking with DRW up, DC'ing as a last resort.

You can easily go into combat with 10 or so RP handy thanks to DnD, HoW, and Butchery (If you have 3/3 Morbidity, you can actually cap RP before a pull by casting DND and HoW on CD). You don't necessarily lose a full 26% damage from that first DS. So the gains from your compromise are either minimal or non-existent, and the losses are 1.5-3 seconds of buff time. Note that the buff also increases your disease damage.

thanks Soilantgreen64 for clarifying DRW functionality.

and yes i momentarily forgot that the GCD is 1.5 secs which brings me to my next question - Haste

i've read quite a few threads here but have yet to get a definitive understanding of Haste on Death Knights
Does Haste Rating improve the cooldown of Runes (I have noticed that Heroism definitely speeds up said cooldowns)
or does it simply increase the number of white hits per minute?

Also although all runes are supposed to take 10secs to cooldown i've noticed that blood runes replenish quicker. Anyone know the exact timing?

If disease damage is set only once when IT is cast, then this will be 10% loss on your frost fever for the duration of the first rotation. However if the dmg is determined from AP at the time of each tick, then the choice of starting with DS or ranged IT is pretty much personal preference. Has anyone tested this or know the mechanics?

For maxing AP buff, DS should take priority over PS on opening, however, since both are melee range.

It may also be useful to note that opening with a ranged IT before getting to melee range means the haste debuff from frost fever will be on the boss earlier at a time when you will not be able to use DS anyhow.

The key point of picking up this build is to grab impurity and perma ghoul. Your revision skips impurity which kills the dps of this build even further. In additon putting the extra point into epidemic is unneeded. I also simmed the build and compared it to the typical blood build, ~1000 dps difference. The lost of 10% dmg and 10% apr is brutual.

Read this: Death Knight: PvE DPS

Haste does nothing for rune cooldowns, only IUP does. Haste will make you swing faster, and shorten the GCD on spells, such as IT and DC, but not for melee strikes like HS or DS.