I'm not sure why your guild has affected ranged and melee meet halfway. You're losing cleave damage on Gormok, and the Snobold will be stunning the ranged so much getting out of stomp range isn't really much difference. Better to either have them stand under Gormok or else let ranged DPS take out ranged snobolds. That loss on HS cleaves, not to mention other classes cleave-like abilities, is just unnecessary.

By the way I'm not sure if it's just a lack of maintenance, but I'm sure the 51/0/20 should instead carry 2/2 Epidemic and 2/3 Morbidity since it is listed as using GoD. Full Epidemic results in less blood runes spent on disease refreshing and thus more HS's. Less refreshing also means less chance of something going wrong and diseases falling off.

I was under the impression that 1/2 Epidemic was used because it lined up with rune cooldowns better. I use 2/2 Epidemic and 2/3 Morbidity because I am horrendous at getting runes lined up for pest. I usually pest when there are < 8seconds left on my diseases and consider anything < 5 to be a win. I really should practice my rotations more so that < 5 is the norm. Going much under 5 scares me a bit because I am really good at hitting buttons right before the GCD finishes and it takes me a second to realize that I didn't actually do anything; then throw in the odd pest miss since I'm not at 17% hit and I am at risk of dropping my diseases which tends to hurt my DPS quite a bit.

Whats a good addon for tracking my diseases on mobs that I'm not targeting (Like Gormok when I am on a Snobold or Jaraxxus when I am on a mistress)? I guess I could use like NECB but I am a bit worried about it getting spammed in AoE fights. Should I just focus the boss and track it that way?

A bit off topic here, but is there any way to target something based on its raid icon? We are having some issue in more hectic fights keeping everyone focused, especially later in the fights if someone has gone down. I know it should be easy enough for people to use /assist, but targeting by raid icon could provide a more elegant solution.

I use 2/2 Epidemic and usually refresh when diseases are at 3 seconds or less. I don't run into too many rune refresh problems, but once in a while I cut it pretty close and get a Pest off that just barely makes it in time. I'm not sure how 1/2 would fix that and aside from not wanting to spend 50 gold on moving one talent point, that's the main reason I've never changed my spec since the start of 3.2.

As for tracking diseases, you can set mods like TellMeWhen and NeedToKnow to track buffs and debuffs on your focus target, if you don't mind doing it that way and you use them already.

The top dps rotation requires 2/2 epidemic. It allows you to have diseases last just over that 20 second rotation in order to re-pest. In a perfect situation in the repeating part of the rotation refreshes should be occurring in the last second of the diseases since you should refresh every 20 seconds with them lasting 21 seconds.

"One of the current discussions is regarding an inflection point between STR and ArP. It has been currently theorized that once you exceed 6200 AP the APE for ArP will exceed that of STR. Making it proper at that point to start gemming for ArP. The math and sims behind this theory seem solid, and personally once I hit around 6300 AP raid buffed began switching some gems, with positive results thus far".

Is this raid buffed or self buffed and with hit cap and exp cap?

GoD supports ArP gemming more than GoDD does.

GoD's rolling disease mechanic lends itself best to gemming for strength due to the nature of the fallen crusader runeforge. The extra HS does mean GoD scales better with ArP than GoDD but it doesn't necessarily mean you should gem for ArP.

I've never gemmed for ArP because from what I understood, even before the ArP nerf, the difference in scaling wasn't really significant until you essentially had BiS gear. I don't have Grim Toll or Runestone and probably never will so I'm not overly concerned about hitting the ArP softcap.

Its a bit odd to me that they seem to be pushing DKs more and more towards ArP with the change to Frost Strike in 3.2 and now the change to Scourge Strike, and yet, they have said that ArP is a confusing stat that they don't like and want to get rid of. I guess that is because they are making DKs increasingly physical based because they are having problems balancing PvP and PvE. I'm guessing when they nerfed FS and SS they didn't really understand the ramifications it would have on PvE DPS and Tanking. It seemed a bit awkward when Unholy DKs were bypassing SS because Oblit was just better.

I wonder what the theoretical single-target break-point would be for Str vs. ArP with GoDisease. I assume at some sufficiently high AP level, you would be doing enough damage before armor that the gains from ArP would outweigh all of the scaling that DKs get from strength. I also assume that the break-point would grow as the number of targets grew since we can't hit more than 2 at a time with physical attacks. Then again, maxing AoE damage doesn't seem overly important for any kind of progression, at least so far. Crazy AoE DPS numbers do always look shiny, like when I broke 11k DPS on whelps in Ony and the next closest was at 9k, but that is all ePeen. With the buffs to AoE TPS on T10 tanking, maybe IC will have a decent number of fights where AoE is required.

They balance DKs with ArP because it's not going away until Cataclysm. For now it's a stat that's on gear and they need to make sure that it's useful since we keep getting more and more of it.

We just have the casters get the snobolds off healers/tanks/other casters. Leave them on melee until the transition phase when the worms come out, then everyone focus and kill those (should only be one or two tops). We're a bit ranged heavy which helps, but you shouldn't have all the melee switch from gormok to the snobolds, especially if he's still up when the worms come out.

So in regaurds to your comment, "The top dps rotation requires 2/2 epidemic." WHAT IS IT?! lol. I have messed with the GoD in the past and really had no gain on the DPS side; but it's the opposite when I am speced into my blood tanking spec. Only because it gives me more time the focus on other tanking aspects, rather then a TPS/DPS gain. I currently use:
IT-PS-HS-DS-HS-PEST-DUMP(w/RS or DC when needed | DS-HS-DS-HSx4 then
PEST-DS-HS-DS-HSx4 repeat

Everything seems to be lining up fine; but I still see no gain with this glyph or rotation. Is my rotation off, or am I just not getting it Thanks in advance for the comments. -Cheer

Use a priority system. Strict rotations should be avoided in most cases, or else just used to get a feel for the spec.

Priorities are:
Diseases on the target > Pest if the time left on diseases is less than three seconds > HS > DS > DC

Reapply diseases if you have more procs up than when they were originally applied so you can get stronger ones rolling. You should also use pest early if you need to move away from a boss and diseases would fall off before you get back.

Does anyone have stat weights that are current as of 3.2.2? The ones in the OP are outdated, for example, only T7 and T8 weights are given, and the other stats are probably as out of date as the Tier bonuses are. Zerack would like to include them in his Gear Optimizer, and he has done so for varied Frost and Unholy builds, but the blood thread has not provided any for him to use.

I see this thrown around a lot as a 'good' indicator of when Pest should be used but 3 seconds is astronomically high. Unless something else, fight mechanic wise, would prevent you from doing so 1 second left on diseases is probably more than necessary unless MS is over 1000.

AttackPower | 1
Strength | 2.93
Agility | 1.76
CritRating | 2.45
HasteRating | 1.83
ArmorPenetrationRating | 2.62
ExpertiseRating | 2.31
BeforeMeleeHitCap<8% | 3.55
SpellHitRating | 0.8
2T9 | 156.36
4T9 | 472.73
2T10 | 250.91
4T10 | 369.09

Using my Gear and not using glyph of disease.

I think the amount that is being sacrificed is where we disagree then because I would disinclined to describe loosing a HS every 12 runes from using Pest that early as not 'much at all.' If you're not loosing a HS every 12 runes then you're not actually casting Pest every time diseases are at 3 secs or less.

Some crude math, assuming a boss fight that lasts 5 minutes (300 seconds):

300/21 = 14.29
Pest every 21 seconds: 14 Pest casts (6 seconds with no diseases at the end)

300/19 = 15.79
Pest every 19 seconds: 15 Pest casts (15 seconds with no diseases at the end)

Now, 15 seconds is obviously long enough that you wouldn't want to be without diseases, so that would turn out to be 16 casts. I'm giving the 21 second the benefit of the doubt and letting it skip that 15th pest and figuring it will use a couple of Death Strikes to fill out those four GCDs with as many hard hitting attacks not dependent on disease modifiers.

So, 14 Pest casts vs 16.

You only lose two Heart Strikes for a five minute boss fight, assuming you strictly use Pest every 19 seconds (keep in mind that refreshing it with less than three seconds left is to give leeway, so you wouldn't actually be doing it strictly every 19 seconds).

Refreshing on the last second of your diseases is best, but playing it safe and refreshing between 19 and 21 seconds isn't going to destroy your DPS and your average boss fight.

Ive been reading up since page 1 now, but i never found the answer to my question. Wouldnt it be better to skip 4pt9 and just stack ArP gear. With the sim im getting about 50 dps above 4pt9.

With the exception of the hands t9 are the BiS pieces on a per slot basis. The only reason to not use them would be if you are over capping either hit or expertise. Also the 4 pc set bonus is very strong even for blood. Combining the fact that there aren't that many pieces of gear in ToC, and subsequently not many ArP pieces, with very strong set bonuses and it's easy to see why Blood has to pick up the tier pieces.

from mmo-champion. Fairly weak sigil. Looks like we'll be using virulence until cataclysm. Unless it refreshes the 3stack every time you DS after the initial buildup. Still, 19 str boost over virulence puts it fairly low on the upgrade priority list.

I don't have an old enough log available anymore, but before 4P9 my diseases each accounted for 5-6% of my total damage. With 4P9 the damage per disease is ~11%, so the set bonus roughly doubles disease damage. I'm rolling diseases with GoD so it probably helps with the damage.