Have most people switched to Unholy in 3.3? I vastly prefer the blood playstyle, and I'm wondering if there are any other blood hold-outs in 3.3.

For those that are still playing blood, have you replaced [Item not found!] with [Item not found!]? Has the elimination in disease-rolling made GoD a dps loss?

I think it's also a matter of many people switching because of the hype, the number of players (and better players for that matter) actually playing Blood or Frost right now are pretty low. I get the feeling the difference is really not as big as people might think, it's just that very few hardcore raiders are playing Blood right now.

I am still playing blood as well, due to my play-style preference, except on Anub Heroic. Blood single target DPS is still strong, however of course your AoE is weaker than Unholy. On boss boss fights, with the exception of Heroic Anub 25, I find myself on par with equally geared unholy DKs.

I have dropped glyph of disease and am using glyph of dark death. Unlike ToC, so far ICC you are changing targets a lot more i.e. Lady Deathwhisper and Gunship; so I find GoD here is less efficient. Also on Marrowgar, unless you are staying in and eating bone storms, you will be deathcoiling more.

Well really there isn't any boss in ICC that you can compare the two equally as far as single target DPS goes. Anything with multiple adds Unholy should dominate so that is the last 3 bosses. Lord Marrowgar favors Unholy a bit because the pet will stay on him the entire time he is in Bone Storm.

Personally I still use GoD.

Festergut will be the next "patchwerk" type of fight to compare dps, IMO. Assuming it does not get changed too much.

Also remember to look at damage done on the boss rather than overall damage. While sometimes the unholy dk in our raid will out dps me as far as overall damage goes I will still have more damage done to the boss than he has.

I am also staying blood. Aside from personal preference which is stated in the few posts above me, blood brings benefits to the raid that helps kill the boss.

First, we have a feral cat druid that is always on top of the damage meters, he gets my hysteria when he lines up his cool downs and calls for it. The difference between him not getting my hysteria and me getting a bonus from unholy is a net dps loss.
Second, abom's might does help the raid when the hunter is absent or when changing mobs or mob groups and they haven't put up the buff.
Third, I still believe that blood will scale better with the top end gear as we get it. Both me and the UH dk in my guild will be getting Shadow's Edge next week which will be BIS (as orcs) for a long time. We shall see how much it helps one or the other more. I suspect that I will get my lead back, at least on boss fights with that weapon but can't be sure until I see it on wowmeters.

I got my 4th T9 today and ran simcraft over my current gear. I reached expertise cap but it still saysthis:

Scale Factors | Normalized
Str 1.4764............3.2624
Agi 0.6213............1.3728
AP 0.4525.............1.0000
Exp 1.6067...........3.5504
ArPen 1.1949........2.6404
Hit 2.0708............4.5758
Crit 0.9461...........2.0907
Haste 0.9012........1.9915
Wdps 4.5958........10.1555


Now I´m slightly confused because from what I see it says that expertise is stronger than strength and arp even when I´m at 7% exp. I guess hit for deathcoil and icy touch but not for melee strikes.

You shouldn't be spending your badges on that stuff until you get your T10.

Agree with shed. You also might want to look into making a set of gear and seeing how it works out. Might not even need the hit off that belt and can go with the superior Coldwrath Links.

What stat values? Your values from a sim? Or the old generic ones?

"VI. GEARING AND STATS WEIGHTS

The two most important stats for Blood DKs are Strength and Armor Penetration. The general rule of thumb while gearing up is ALWAYS gem for STR, except to meet Meta gem requirements.

The following are the currently accepted stat weights for Blood DKs, thanks to Methods for his outstanding work with DK stat equivalencies!

Stat APE
Attack Power 1
Weapon DPS 9.89
Strength 2.89
Armor Penetration 2.75
Hit Rating (to cap) 2.51
Expertise Rating 2.47
Crit Rating 1.56
Haste Rating 1.5
Agility 1.37
Hit Rating (to spell hit cap) .52
Armor .03


This link will allow you to see which gear in the Wowhead database is currently best according to these weights:
Blood Loot Weighting"

From the OP first post. And I'm not personally planning on buying the belt for a long time, but the stat values still seemed very odd to me.

I believe these are outdated. You should run your own sims for stat weighings specific to your gear. I also believe that there will come a time when gemming arpen> gemming str, as for unholy DKs arpen is almost as good as str in BiS gear.

Well perhaps you make the same mistake as many other players and do not count the pets.

Well i believe it has already come. For me, with DeatbringersWill and 4pt10, Kahorie did get a weight of >3 for Armor Pen. It's not exatly caldulated, but i suspect, my simulations are pretty accurate for ilvl264 gear including Deathbringers Will.

AttackPower | 1 (0,67 DPS/per AP)
Strength | 2,87
Agility | 1,73
CritRating | 2,33
HasteRating | 2
ArmorPenetrationRating | 3,13
ExpertiseRating | 3,94
BeforeMeleeHitCap<8% | 5,79
WeaponDPS | 10,15
WeaponSpeed | 477,61
| Template | Blood 51-00-20-01-GoD
| Priority | Blood
| Presence | Blood
| Sigil | Virulence
| RuneEnchant | FallenCrusader /
| RuneEnchant | FallenCrusader
| Pet Calculation | True

Use logic.
All APE values calculated are assumed to be pre capped.

Hit Rating and Expertise Rating are calculated using negative stat deltas and so represent the DPS loss per stat decrease.

This is necessary because many/most classes have these stats cap'd. You can override this behavior in two ways: First, you may set explicit stat deltas via scale_hit_rating= and scale_expertise_rating=. Second, you may set positive_scale_delta=1 to force the use of only positive scale deltas.

Posting stat weights is a little tricky as nothing is one size fits all. With the gear currently available its almost impossible not to be hit and expertise capped, but what is the value in simming that? What you end up at is the fact that everyone needs to run a sim for themselves to get accurate stat weights. I'm working on pulling a set of weights combining info from a few different sources, so I'll post that when it is complete.

I'm currently putting together a few other things such as GoD vs GoDD updates. If you have a suggestion for something you would to see please PM me, don't clutter up the thread. I expect to have an update complete sometime this weekend.

I had a little discussion with another DK about Needle Encrusted Scorpion vs Darkmoon Card Greatness ( STR). He claimed that the NES was better even though the uptime was lower than DMC. I'm trying to find some updated numbers for Str vs ArP procs but get conflicting numbers. Anyone with more experience with Blood have some input? greatly appreciated I've been unholy since I leveled my DK heh.

The value of Arp increases as you gain more Arp. Because of this an ARP trinket can never be given a static value of X EP. A DK with relatively low ARP will always want to use DMG over NES, and a DK nearing the ARP softcap will always want to use NES over DMG so that they can reach the hardcap with the proc up. Finding the break even point is the only real debate.

That is true. Notice how I said assuming above stat weighing calculations, calculated from 4pt10 and DBW. 4pt10 and DBW gives ALOT of arpen, and that is why I specifically stated that.

I just did some sims using 264/277 ilvl gear and shadowmourne.
Here are the stat weighings I got. I did not gem for arpen for the sims.
<Strength>2314</Strength>
<Agility>129</Agility>
<Intel>58</Intel>
<Armor>16030</Armor>
<AttackPower>350</AttackPower>
<HitRating>270</HitRating>
<CritRating>1166</CritRating>
<HasteRating>23</HasteRating>
<ArmorPenetrationRating>1015</ArmorPenetrationRating>
<ExpertiseRating>158</ExpertiseRating>

AttackPower | 1 (0.73 DPS/per AP)
Strength | 2.77
Agility | 1.75
CritRating | 2.3
HasteRating | 1.42
ArmorPenetrationRating | 3.64
ExpertiseRating | 3.15
BeforeMeleeHitCap<8% | 4.25
SpellHitRating | 0.05
WeaponDPS | 10.55
WeaponSpeed | 479.45
2T10 | 355.71
4T10 | 425.71
WhisperingFangedSkull | 334.72
DeathbringersWillHeroic | 419.44
NeedleEncrustedScorpion | 98.61
DeathChoiceHeroic | 434.72
DeathbringersWill | 373.61
Comet | 276.39
DarkMatter | 252.78
Bandit | 79.17
Necromantic | 87.5
Victory | 190.28
DCDeath | 93.06
Greatness | 255.56
DeathChoice | 383.33
Pyrite | 119.44
OldGod | 123.61
Mirror | 97.22
BitterAnguish | 68.06
GrimToll | 186.11
MjolRune | 186.11

Conclusion. Gem arpen to reach hardcap then gem str if there are any gem slots left.

I probably couldve included some leather gear for additional arpen to reach cap, but this should be in the right ballpark.

There's one thing you have to consider when comparing GoD vs GoDD: The sim doesn't apply diseases for the DRW. The DRW doesn't have disease damage and the bonus damage for strikes is based on the players diseases.
That should boost the GoDD enough to make the GoD a bad choice.

However as one approaches BiS gear, there is sooo much arpen. DC does not benefit from arpen at all, thus damage from additional HS from GoD will outweigh the benefits of GoDD.

I think what the poster you quoted is saying is DRW requires you to apply diseases (so DRW will apply diseases) to get the full benefit for DRW's Strikes so GoD doesn't help DRW's strike damage. Also as you get the high ArP gear, you will have more strength/crit as well to help Death Coil do scaling damage.

Other than padding trash pack damage meters, GoDD is the best choice.