It also seems to have a ten second cooldown. I took it to a test dummy earlier and found it would never refresh unless the buff has less than ten seconds left on it.

On BB vs HS, I think the problem is the situation you're facing.


I'm using Parrot to aggregate HS hits at the moment, and the numbers fluctuate from around 10k (two hits) to 20k+ (two crits). Once you add Death Coil proccs, you realize that even with a 25% cut on that damage it would take a sensible number of targets to make BB a gain in "cleave" situations (2-3 targets).

WotLk has made procc frequency basically irrelevant; like most other trinkets, the Toll has an internal cooldown and a redicolously high procc chance. Unless they lower that cooldown, you will see it up more or less all the time it can be up.

Not as much as people may seem to think, al least for HS.

Even assuming a cleaving heavy situation where HS is 40% of your dps, even assuming all those HS hit two targets, then your total dps loss will be around 10%. And that's a pretty redicolous scenario.

On normal fights, where cleaving is absent or minimal and your HS dmg is 30%-35% of your damage, your overall dps loss will probably be something between 0 and 5%.
Assuming HS is 35% of your dps and 30% of your HSs hit a secondary target, you're losing about 6% dps post the patch. It is a nerf but nothing that will break the specc.

Being able to use Sigil of Virulence as blood also did a good job at negating the arpen nerf. Raid buffed, its proc is worth close to 600AP with ~90% uptime. My parses from yesterday showed no significant difference from pre-patch parses, in the same gear. Grim Toll proccing was still giving me huge numbers on HS/DS and white swings as well. I had been considering switching to Unholy this patch but even with the nerfs in, Blood still seems to be very strong and scales exceptionally well, especially as 258 gear becomes more readily available.

I dont see the reasoning behind this. How does 4p t9 benefit GoD more? As GoD basically refreshs the diseases with 1 blood rune. But our main dps ability is still HS. Also, GoDD benefits DC procs from HS so it would be more beneficial.
SoV uptime should be almost always up, so I dont see how that has anything to do with GoD for additional DS..

Doesnt GoD just refresh the disease on the primary target? Your diseases should be on the primary target at all times anyways, so please explain how that changes 4p t9 if you're gonna keep the diseases on full duration.

Maths is needed and it may be debatable whether if Blood's dots are strong enough, however, his reasoning is that once we apply frost fever and blood plague when the procs are lined up, ie. fallen crusader, virulence, two piece tier 9, greatness, death's choice, and keep the diseases rolling, the crits from 4 piece tier 9 would benefit from those diseases more. A lot more. It's relative, and again, probably need some maths.

What AtheistGod means by that is when you refresh your current target's diseases with GoD, those diseases retain the amount of attack power that you had when you originally cast those diseases via IT and PS. This is called "rolling diseases". The theory is that if you can re-cast IT and PS when you have your highest amount of AP then roll those diseases with GoD then it will result in higher dps. Disease damage will contribute higher to your overall damage, thus making the 4pc T9 more worthwhile in a GoD spec.

Id think blood should just stick with 2p, and use other pieces that have arpen, such as the emblem helm, titanium razorplate, arpen gloves off anub 25, etc for more arpen. We are still mainly an arpen based spec, so disease dmg should not surpass our other priorities, hence why we should stay to our current glyphs/spec.
Thats just my opinion, no math to support it, but it has been mainly that way in the past. We ignore less beneficial stat bonuses and stack more arpen.

Saying that Pestilence costs you a Heart Strike is a bit misleading.

Normal rotation has 1x IT, 1x PS, 6x HS, 2x DS
With GoD (and after diseases are rolling): 9x HS, 1x DS, 1x Pest

With GoD we also loose 1 talent point in Morbidity, and some damage on strikes before diseases are set. I use one short rotation of DS HS HS IT PS to get procs on start.

Another thing ARP nerf brought is regemming from ARP to STR. In my mind this also values disease rolling more than deathcoils (and we even loose DC sigil). OF course math is needed to confirm or deny this.

I'm having alot of problems keeping the GoD flowing perfectly, it may be because i not using a correct one, but on the second part of the rotation, i can never do more than 2 HS

What I'm using is:

DS > HS > IT > PS > HS > DC
DS > HS > HS > HS > Pest > DC

Then

DS > HS > HS > HS > DC
DS > HS > HS > Pest

I'm sure the rotation is faulty, because when i do the second HS i already have the diseases at 3sec.

On the ArP discussion, i bought yesterday the T9 helm and gloves (ilvl 232) to get my 4pc bonus, i lost around ~130 ArP from gear (including ArP nerf), and using normal rotation (not the above mention), i noticed a big diference on my DPS.

Prio-patch i was doing safelly 6k DPS on N. Beasts, and yesterday i barelly reached 5k, that makes me wonder if 4pc bonus is really necessary for Blood, 2pc t8 and 2pc t9 seems alot more beneficial, with SoVH and GoDD.

If you start with DS at the beginning of first rotation, then next phase you'll have 2x Death Runes. Example:

BBUUFF -> DS (UF) > HS (B) > IT/PS (UF) > HS (B)
BBUDDF -> HSx2 (DD) > DS (UF) > HS (B) > Pt (B)

Sprinkle DCs and trinkets as you wish.


On a side note, if you ask me, go with this rotation:

Before boss, build up RP (Ask your priests and druids to spam heals and shields on you, spam DnD and HoW, etc. I almost always start encounters with arund 70-80 RP)

BBUUFF -> DS -> {DRW & Trinkets Macro} -> IT/PS -> HSx2 -> DC/Ghoul
BBUDDF -> HSx2 -> DS -> HS -> Pest -> DC/etc

Your rotation doesn't use runes in the same order both times. This will cause problems in anything short of perfect reaction times with no outside factors.

A better rotation is
DS PS IT HS HS
HS HS DS HS Pest
DS HS HS HS HS

and repeating the 2nd and 3rd lines.

My DPS on beasts remained the same and I don't have 4-piece. The fight does have some elements out of your control, such as where Icehowl decides to run or breathe, whether you get paralytic toxin, etc.

Sims with GoD wearing 245 4-piece T9 and titanium razorplate would be nice I suppose, to settle the issue of whether using it is viable or not. It's pretty heavily latency dependent as well.

There's a number of fights where I'd say it's worth it -if- you have 4pc T9 (hodir, anub) and a number where it isn't (beasts). If it comes down to having to keep a stack of GoD and GoDD in my bags to swap around for specific fights, that isn't so bad.

Gemming ArP vs Strength is a bit more complicated than a blanket 'yes' or 'no.' ArP scales effectively quadratically while strength scales linearly. So really the choice to gem ArP > Str should be based on how much ArP you currently have. In my current gear setup I have 433 ArP (haven't regemmed since the patch) and MRunestone. I ran three simulations (did not include ghoul dps), one with my current setup, one with full ArP gemming, and one with full Str gemming. The sim showed that ArP > Str for full ArP gemming while Str > ArP for the other two. Interestingly enough it gave me the same DPS number for full ArP as my current setup, and a dps loss for pure Str gemming.

Also a page or two back in this thread someone posted EP of full ToC25 gear with a large amount of armor pen and ArP beat Str by a substantial amount.
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The main question I am asking myself right now is when we get a substantial amount of ToC25 heroic gear, which depending on the pieces will probably involve massive amounts of ArP which may put us over the soft cap for MRunestone - Will it be worth ditching MR and going for max passive armor pen or staying at the softcap and keeping MR?

I am going to do some code editing sometime within the next week so I can run a series of simulations comparing Str and ArP and make a 3d plot comparing them. My initial thoughts on this is to go from ~1500-2000 (unbuffed) strength in increments of 10 and ArP rating in increments of 1, using Str, ArP, (ArP dps value / Str dps value) -1 as my axis. I will probably use my own gear as a base since it is a decent mix of Ulduar and ToC gear.

According to our today's parse from 25man coliseum Sigil of Virulence's buff seems to be on for pretty nice amount of time: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay - It happened to proc more than the 2p9 bonus.

SoVir's internal CD is only 10 seconds, while the 2 piece's ICD is (if I recall correctly) 45 seconds or so. SoVir also has an 80% chance to proc, so it should be up near constantly.

this is very interesting. I also ran simulation with the gear i have and it show a lost of 100dps at my current gear when gemming full ArPen (540rating). Currently my ArPen is ar 320rating about 22%

i have 4813 AP no buff.. and which selfbuff (horn of winter I have well over 5100AP.

...

I ran the simulator for a bit using my stats pre patch and post patch. Pre patch I was sitting at a whooping 741 passive ArP, post patch I switched to 4T9 and strength gemming, going down to 562 ArP. I tried some simulations of my old gear but with using 4T9 and Virulence, and then adding either strength or ArP. I got up to pretty ridiculous numbers before adding 20 ArP became even to adding 20 strength - at around 940 ArP - and then it took yet some more rating for it to give higher dps than with adding strength. Not sure if that helps you any.

I the main difference between your simulations and mine is that I am using an armor pen trinket as opposed to Blood of the Old God. The value the sim gives for armor pen factors in the massive boosts I get from having the proc up (20% uptime on 655 ArP)