Let's assume for a moment that Glyph of Disease is worth taking. This means we lose Glyph of DD and 1 in Morbidity into Epidemic. My question is, does this make Sigil of Awareness now the choice of sigil over Sigil of Vengeful Heart?

Second question...would it be better, in the case of using GoD...that we take NOTD over BCB and move 1 from BCB to retain 3/3 Morbidity?

Alright Test ran, zero expertice except for the 6 from talents. Sarth 3D zerg, not the greatest, fast fight but heres the take. BCB 1/10 dodged ~2k net loss, Melee 2/29 dodged 6.9% ~8k net loss, Heart Strike 3/42 7.1% ~12k net loss. Total loss ~22k Total damage for fight = 661666 So as im sure you can see even though my attacks didnt get dodged much thats still a rather large amount of damage to be tossing away. Im now expertice capped at the loss of, 14% Armor Penatration and nothing else. percent wise, correct me if im wrong but I was losing .033% of my damage. I didnt factor in Crits for the dodged attacks and I took the middle of what I hit for in those attacks.

Just wanted to clarify for other Dks how expericance factors in, I had thought it was entirely useless.

Honestly - what did you think the softcap was for? If we didn't get dodged when attacking from behind, why would we ever take anything with expertise on it?

Expertise capping isn't worth gemming for, typically. Although hit capping/exp capping is very useful and helpful for maximizing and smoothing out your rotations. Pick up gear with expertise on it.

Also - as far as testing for the 6200 raid buffed AP, I think its clear that you haven't tested that either. It was something quoted a long time ago back at the beginning of 3.1 from sims/theorycrafting, prior to anyone having any real experience with 239 ilvl+ gear. Unfortunately, it's caught on like a meme and I see it quoted as gospel on this thread, in game and on other boards. Personally, I prefer not gemming for ARP, as its a nerf to AOE output for a marginal increase in single target dps. I do have a armor pen set with 100% armor pen (with food + elixir), and while it can be nice for single target, I do have to drop my overall ilvl to do so. My raid testing has pretty much led me to handle armor pen in the same way as expertise - get as close to cap as possible without gemming or sacrificing your overall quality of gear. If you're using a armor pen trinket (GT/mjolnir) then get as close to the soft cap as possible. If you have enough high quality armor pen gear to go substantially over the softcap to the point that it makes the proc wasted, then swap to a different trinket and try to maintain hit cap/expertise cap while wearing enough quality armor pen gear to get it as high as possible.

Ulduar 10/25 Hardmode level - you're probably best off using a grim toll/mjolnir and gearing for softcap.

In the near future, as the death's choice becomes more and more available (particularly the hard mode version), the soft cap will become a thing of the past as people replace their GT/mjolnir's, and gearing for max armor pen will be more of an option.


On a side note - I recommend re-reading the OP and replacing your meta with the correct one, and then dropping the str/stam gems, throw a prismatic gem in the blue slot that gives you the highest value socket bonus, and then regemming the other blue gem you have to a str gem.

This ''Raid buffed AP'' Would it be with or without the 10% AP in combat , with or without trinket procs?

Ive searched all over and couldn't find the answer. As mine seems quite low with kings might pink paw flask and buff food.

The results listed elsewhere on this forum suggest that hit and expertise are the most important stats for Blood.

Where? EVERYTHING I've seen has listed Strength/Armor Pen above Hit/Expertise, except 1 spreadsheet posted a few pages back that quite simply looks wrong.

Regardless, Expertise is almost always a loss to gem because very rarely do you actually use all the expertise you've gemmed towards your actual rating. Any expertise beyond your listed rating is wasted itemization.

Hit is only worth gemming as +10 str/10 hit when all 10 hit can be used towards your cap and theres a yellow socket bonus to be gained (Theres really no socket bonus bad enough to make 20 str > 10 str/10 hit+socket so this is basically universal).

Link? It must be in a thread I don't frequent, last I checked str/arp were still ahead of both hit and expertise. I still haven't seen any "final" stat weights for 3.2. I've seen some estimates and some testing, but nothing looks nailed down yet.

I wasn't referring to bloodboil really, more so death and decay and pestilenced diseases. And figuring out HS vs BB really isn't that difficult. If you have an idea what your average Heart Strike is and what your average BB is, just find out what multiplier for BB is needed to surpass two HS (main target + cleave). And of course I wasn't saying to spam blood boil, aside from certain encountes like Freya lasher phase, and say, Yogg 0 Keeper to help keep Immortal Guardians low so the tank doesn't get in any danger. So in that sense, it all boils down to how much of a benefit you see from armor pen.

It was easy enough to get enough armor pen to stop using GT/Mjolnir before coliseum came out - the APE on GT is great sure, but its negated by the easy to get to hit cap for two handers, and the plethora of armor pen gear available towards the end of Uld10/25 hard modes. I'd really like to see where you are getting your numbers from, since I question a lot of the numbers that are thrown around on this board. For instance - from everything I've read/seen in game, DRW doesn't transfer over armor penetration - so using a armor pen trinket/gemming for ARP is also an indirect nerf to DRW as well. Since blood dps is so reliant on stacking trinket procs/cooldowns. Just something to think about - I haven't seen a reliable simulator/spreadsheet that captures this. In my opinion its the difference between an "educated" blood DK and an exceptional one.


This is droning on - but the bottom line is that from everything I've seen, armor pen is a marginal increase over strength for single target - and changing a few gems won't give you the boost you need to really push armor penetration where it needs to be. Not worth regemming for in my opinion - blood's strength is single target, and has comparitively weak AOE compared to some of the other DK specs. Is dropping 200 strength for 200 armor pen and seeing a 2% increase on SOME fights worth when its a substantial loss on AOE? Something also worth thinking about - those armor pen gems may not be doing you any big favors if you swap specs around sometimes and use some of the same gear for them.

The answer to someones question of "which is better ArP or Str"? is really pretty much this - stop looking at it as an "either/or" situation and get as much of both as possible, since more ArP makes your Str more effective and vice versa.

1. No
2. No, keep 3/3 BCB 2/2 epidemic and 2/3 Morbidity with GoD

Expertise does not reward you per rating. It rewards you when you've reached enough rating to get 1 value (Something like 8.1 rating for 1 point of expertise, I forget). So, if you add 10 expertise rating, but only needed 4 to reach the next value, thats 6 points of wasted itemization.

If I'm wrong please do correct me somebody, but based on how the character sheet updates with the addition of expertise, this seems correct.

Again with the false and unfair claim of "substantial AOE DPS Loss?" Can we try to discuss this within the realms of realism?

You use DnD on one single pull as a DPS DK, and that is Freya lasher phase. In all of Ulduar there is literally not 3 unique trash pulls where you use DnD. Hell I can't think of ONE except pulling too many Hodir trash at once.

It is a rather irritating debating tactic the way you make one side seem miniscule (2% increase on SOME fights) and then make your side seem dramatic by comparison (Substantial DPS loss) while ignoring all the information that disputes such a claim. So 99% of the fights in game are just "SOME fights" now? Who are you fooling here, besides yourself?

Single or two target (relevant for heart strikes which benefit more from ArP) is 99% of this game. XT favors ArP. Iron council favors ArP. Thorim favors ArP (Blood optimizes DPS by going diseaseless in arena). Hodir favors neither (Since the magic damage bonus bridges the gap and makes Str equal), Freya favors ArP for 5/7th of the fight (2/7 being 2 lasher phases) for a net gain in ArP over Strength, Kologarn favors ArP, Auriaya favors ArP, Mimiron favors ArP, Vezax favors ArP, and Yogg favors ArP heavily in all forms except 0 keeper where they're equal as Str is better for P3 while ArP is better for P1/2. Algalon favors ArP. Ignis favors ArP. Razorscale favors ArP. In ToC, all 4/4 released bosses heavily favor ArP.

So, lets quit spreading what we know are falsehoods and state our points from a realistic perspective. ArP isn't a 2% increase on SOME fights, its an increase on well over 90% of end game fights. And that substantial AOE DPS you like to dramatize is an extremely insignificant ~3-5% loss in AoE damage WHEN there are enough mobs to use DnD and Blood Boil spam, which is ONE single occurance in Ulduar or ToC, which is yet again, Freya lashers.

You can choose to pass on a 2% increase in DPS on nearly every boss fight in favor of doing 12,000 DPS vs Freya Lashers instead of 11,500 if that suits your playstyle better. But for those of us intent on min/maxing our characters and optimizing our overall DPS, ArP is the way to go over Strength.

As for ArP's affect on Dancing Rune Weapon, I'm unsure. If its affected by haste I don't see why it wouldn't be affected by Armor Pen. Either way, I know they're changing something in the future to make pets scale with stats like ArP. I'm in the dark on this subject but if it doesn't work now it really doesn't change anything in the Strength vs Armor Pen argument, espicially with the announced change. Either way, ArP's advantage over Strength is cut down by no more than 3-5% IF this is true. So, if ArP is a 2% DPS upgrade gemmed over Strength, the point you bought up would make that 1.80-1.86% better than Str. Not significant enough to change anything.

ArP is the clear winner, I see no logic nor merit in your attempts to justify gemming Strength. Its a rather indisputable fact that ArP up to your soft/hardcap will simply add more DPS by the end of an Ulduar or ToC raid than an equal amount of Strength, why are you choosing to just pass on better damage so you can do better vs one add phase vs Freya?

I believe he's talking about expertise being truncated (and thus losing part of the value).
Can anyone here confirm if this is true? I remember seeing posts on the rogue thread few months ago proofing hat expertise do not truncate (and the actual dodge cap is somewhere around 25.5 expertise, but I didn''t follow through.
I'm currently at 24/24 (154 ratings)and hit capped, and gemming one should put me over cap, so I decided not to, just not sure if it's worth gemming for it to reach the cap.

So you're saying your chance to reduce dodges is not the perfect interval of .25% the character sheet would lead you to believe?

Edit - Very good link! That answers it perfectly, then yes, Exp recieves its full value for every rating!