So I've been floating around through the forums since 3.3.3 came out and from what I can tell, Blood is the best single target DPS spec out there, but when I switched to it from Unholy I was doing about 2k less DPS than I normally pull as Unholy. Is this because Blood needs to have a lot more ArP to be pushing out higher numbers or am I missing something? When I switched over it was just one fight, VoA 25, and I didn't change any gems. But I did about 6k instead of my normal 8-9k. Thoughts?
A good deal of it is also learning how to maximize blood dps. If I went unholy, I'm going to be lacking the little details that experienced UH players are going to know. Likewise, with blood you need to make sure you maximize your DRW usage. Setting up the runes for it the rotation before you use it. You want to make sure you put fresh diseases on your target AFTER you use DRW. DRW needs it's own diseases up to get disease bonuses from heart strike. It's also a lot about the encounter, do you know when hero is going to be blown and can you plan ahead for when to use your cooldowns?
Aside from player ability, you don't want to miss any of your runes as blood because it's rotation is very tight. Get your softcap expertise up, get your hit rating up, and then gem for strength. Keep grabbing gear with ArP on it, and use Kahorie's simulator to find out when to swap from str gems to ArP gems. I've heard people say get 50% ArP before regemming for ArP but best way to tell is to use Kahories.
That's not what I asked........I know Unholy needs strength more than ArP, what I was asking was, why, for the one fight I went Blood DPS for, was my damage so much less than Unholy? As Blood do I need to be shooting for passive ArP cap? What are Blood DKs doing to be "top sustained single target and top burst" that the Unholy forum says they are?
Yes, to be at that top level you need to be hitting the ArP cap. Once you have enough ArP gear you can make the swap from STR to ArP which is what is needed to do the type of dps you are referring to as Blood.
That's not what I asked........I know Unholy needs strength more than ArP, what I was asking was, why, for the one fight I went Blood DPS for, was my damage so much less than Unholy? As Blood do I need to be shooting for passive ArP cap? What are Blood DKs doing to be "top sustained single target and top burst" that the Unholy forum says they are?
Sorry Trarr I read it quickly and looked like going from blood to unholy. But the above post is correct in what you are looking for.
Yes, to be at that top level you need to be hitting the ArP cap. Once you have enough ArP gear you can make the swap from STR to ArP which is what is needed to do the type of dps you are referring to as Blood.
Not just ArP but you need to be capping Expertise as well without using a ton of gems to do it. This is my numbers I have 100 Latency GoD spec all capped. I'm not sure the sims choices for when to refresh Diseases with Pestilence or how to use Blood Tap properly in a Blood spec are very good, but I can't find a manual rotation that works right with GoD so the potential here is probably even higher. Note this is not using Hangman. I'm generating EP values right now.
I would stick to Arp before capping expertise. I feel like I'm losing a lot of dps on my low expertise, do I'd rather cap it if I could but to me Arp has proved to be an excellent gearing investment.
A side notice to the guy who asked for advice: at the moment, the highest dps specc for single target is Frost, which is also better for AoE and doesn't favour Arp this much, allowing for an UH offspecc for those fights where UH still dominates.
I would really not advice to switch to Blood at present, because it's the specc you need to sacrifice the most for (in terms of gold and gemming) with severe limitations and no real benefit currently.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
Does DRW get the benefit of GoD? I'm wondering, at the end of DRW if I should put fresh diseases up so the diseases keep on ticking after DRW expires. Without the GoD effect, I'd be trading either HSx2 OR DSx1 to refresh the diseases (depending on what runes are available).
Does DRW get the benefit of GoD? I'm wondering, at the end of DRW if I should put fresh diseases up so the diseases keep on ticking after DRW expires. Without the GoD effect, I'd be trading either HSx2 OR DSx1 to refresh the diseases (depending on what runes are available).
I would stick to Arp before capping expertise. I feel like I'm losing a lot of dps on my low expertise, do I'd rather cap it if I could but to me Arp has proved to be an excellent gearing investment.
Not that I'm disagreeing, but unless you are near cap to capped Arp and capped Expertise you're not going to see a significant damage increase over Unholy. Those misses really really hurt, especially when you start considering the 4 piece bonus.
Not that I'm disagreeing, but unless you are near cap to capped Arp and capped Expertise you're not going to see a significant damage increase over Unholy. Those misses really really hurt, especially when you start considering the 4 piece bonus.
I would argue that you will NEVER see a significant increase over UH, expecially post 3.3.3. The fights where Blood would have a theorycal edge don't see a real advantage in real play (and WoL results), while the fights were UH is still king see a definite dominance over Blood.
At present time, Frost is the best single target and second AoE, UH is arguably second single target and best AoE, and Blood is a close third single target and a distant third AoE specc.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
I would argue that you will NEVER see a significant increase over UH, expecially post 3.3.3. The fights where Blood would have a theorycal edge don't see a real advantage in real play (and WoL results), while the fights were UH is still king see a definite dominance over Blood.
At present time, Frost is the best single target and second AoE, UH is arguably second single target and best AoE, and Blood is a close third single target and a distant third AoE specc.
All the sims I've run have Blood higher by a pretty good margin and the ranks on WMO seem to suggest that Blood was already overtaking Unholy. What makes you think it's third?
All the sims I've run have Blood higher by a pretty good margin and the ranks on WMO seem to suggest that Blood was already overtaking Unholy. What makes you think it's third?
You can use World of Logs to look at each spec's damage done World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis. I just looked at the heroic parses (good chance those people have a 277 weapon), and in every encounter (except BQL) Blood is below Unholy when you take the average of the top 10 dps of each spec.
BQL is the outlier, since Blood scales the best except people don't have full 277 gear to get enough scaling to beat other specs on the rest of the fights. Perhaps with the ICC aura increased to 10% next week along with better gear Blood will be the "best".
E: I forgot about the 75% health requirement for 10% dps, with Heroic modes that isn't going to happen 100% of the time.
Last edited by frmorrison : 03/28/10 at 8:55 PM.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
You can use World of Logs to look at each spec's damage done World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis. I just looked at the heroic parses (good chance those people have a 277 weapon), and in every encounter (except BQL) Blood is below Unholy when you take the average of the top 10 dps of each spec.
BQL is the outlier, since Blood scales the best except people don't have full 277 gear to get enough scaling to beat other specs on the rest of the fights. Perhaps with the ICC aura increased to 10% next week along with better gear Blood will be the "best".
You said it yourself. People don't have the full 277 gear to beat Unholy. You need near capped Expertise and ArP to see a significant difference. 1000 ArP isn't going to put you past Unholy. 1200 ArP is, and the expertise so you aren't losing heart strikes and blowing Advantage uptime. The fact that Blood is now putting out comparable numbers to Unholy from people that aren't ArP capped should allude to its down the road potential. Blood is higher, but the gear requirement to get there is very high. Blood also suffers from sheer unpopularity as there are a lot more UH DK's which means more chances at perfect RNG to get record DPS numbers. Of course unfortunately for Blood, Frost might be the new single target king anyway so it could be moot. Although I havent seen any Frost sims that have simmed as high as my Blood sims, in part because Frost won't be getting Shadowmourne. You also need to consider that 2 of the top UH DK's on WoL(Modk, Mauser) are both using Shadowmourne and none of the Blood Dk's are.
Though blood simulations show that blood beats unholy in BiS gear, blood requires your HP to be above 75% constantly. In many of the harder HMs with intense raid heals, that may not always be the case. To me, the margin between blood and unholy is not worth the possible loss of damage and survivability, which may ultimately be more important.
On the set up keys for my Blood Dk I have the rotation down correctly but there are times where per rotation given in the previous threads I have a down time to where I could use like a IT or an extra PS. Should I use that or wait to get the DS back and continue with the rotation. I do around 4.3 Dps Now and Want to push for atleast 6k. Should I monitor any haste as enchants to spead up the rotation process?
On the set up keys for my Blood Dk I have the rotation down correctly but there are times where per rotation given in the previous threads I have a down time to where I could use like a IT or an extra PS. Should I use that or wait to get the DS back and continue with the rotation. I do around 4.3 Dps Now and Want to push for atleast 6k. Should I monitor any haste as enchants to spead up the rotation process?
If you are doing your rotation correctly and are expertise/hit-capped, there should not be any situations where you have errant runes lying around. Haste does not affect rune refresh and is a generally junk stat for blood.
If you are doing your rotation correctly and are expertise/hit-capped, there should not be any situations where you have errant runes lying around. Haste does not affect rune refresh and is a generally junk stat for blood.
This is not true. You will still see Icy Touch/Pestilence misses. Most fights in ICC also feature situations where the boss is not stationary and/or turns to randomly target raid members with abilities, resulting in parries. You are correct that haste will not effect rune refresh, at least until patch 4.0
This is not true. You will still see Icy Touch/Pestilence misses. Most fights in ICC also feature situations where the boss is not stationary and/or turns to randomly target raid members with abilities, resulting in parries. You are correct that haste will not effect rune refresh, at least until patch 4.0
Erm, he said hitcapped. The difference between melee hitcap and spell hitcap is only 33 hit for alliance or 26 hit for horde. Also, parries are mostly (entirely?) avoidable by clever players.
Also, parries are mostly (entirely?) avoidable by clever players.
No, bosses move too fast for human reaction to move to the back if they have abilities that make them turn to cast. That said, this situation is not often but nearly every melee will get a handful of parries. Note only 2 ICC bosses can parry haste (Lady and Sindra), so the only thing to worry about is the dps loss.
Regarding Blood dps, the 10% buff and 277 weapons didn't help to close the gap and made it even bigger. The only encounter where Blood's average isn't noticeably last is Blood Queen (due to the Unholy pet not getting the bite's buff). PP has a few with the Abomination driver being counted.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
Erm, he said hitcapped. The difference between melee hitcap and spell hitcap is only 33 hit for alliance or 26 hit for horde. Also, parries are mostly (entirely?) avoidable by clever players.
Right - and that is about a 1% chance to miss on all spells, which means that you will see misses occur on icy touch and pestilence during a night of raiding.
And parries are definitely not entirely avoidable - during our last ICC clear (minus LK Heroic attempts), I had 21 parries on rune abilities on bosses - and I was expertise capped for the entire night. Yes, I realize I am not expertise capped at the moment, but you can see that I received a new belt on Tuesday, which dropped me under the expertise cap. Were some of these avoidable? Possibly. But definitely not all of them. In some situations you could theoretically run AROUND the boss when running back in to DPS (for instance, running back in to melee Rotface after getting a disease), but this would be an even larger dps loss than running THROUGH him.
Long story short - if you gear and play correctly, you will still see a sizeable portion of misses on spell based abilities and a sizable number of parries while expertise soft capped.
No, bosses move too fast for human reaction to move to the back if they have abilities that make them turn to cast. That said, this situation is not often but nearly every melee will get a handful of parries. Note only 2 ICC bosses can parry haste (Lady and Sindra), so the only thing to worry about is the dps loss.
Regarding Blood dps, the 10% buff and 277 weapons didn't help to close the gap and made it even bigger. The only encounter where Blood's average isn't noticeably last is Blood Queen (due to the Unholy pet not getting the bite's buff). PP has a few with the Abomination driver being counted.
I suspect Blood becoming a very distant third over time.
Another factor to consider is that it seems like no Blood DK has Shadowmourne yet; I'll stick to blood once I finish mine (should take 2 more weeks at least) but I'm expecting no miracolous scaling effect.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
Long story short - if you gear and play correctly, you will still see a sizeable portion of misses on spell based abilities and a sizable number of parries while expertise soft capped.
I'd have to disagree with your conclusion. I don't feel that one miss and one or two parries per fight is "a sizable number" nor would you particularly notice the effect on your rotation, which is what started this mini-discussion in the first place.
Perhaps with the ICC aura increased to 10% next week along with better gear Blood will be the "best".
Since they made it so pets get the ICC buff as well, blood isn't going to beat unholy because of that buff no matter the stack. Same case would be if BQL buff worked on pets.
Hello, I have a few questions to ask some of the more experienced Blood DK's that are still around.
I was previously Frost. I've juggled back and forth in ICC as Unholy and Frost quite a few times. I'm receiving the next Shadowmourne and thought why not try out Blood again before it gets the axe for Cata supposedly (haven't played it since Ulduar). I re-gemmed to full ArP as close as I could to 100% without going over and now sit at 89.53%(99.53% with Blood Gorged if I'm correct in thinking it works exactly as I have read browsing the last few pages) and am anticipating to try the spec out on the next raid reset.
Some of the more serious questions I want to ask:
- Is the gap between Blood and Unholy really that big that it would be a huge downgrade to be specced Blood with Shadowmourne in comparison to Unholy?
- Sunder Armor + Faerie Fire should always be on the target anyway, but in the cases of target switching or multiple adds (small groups of 2-3, ie LK Valkyr Phase) how bad is it going to affect my damage?
I also read in the thread about the "anticipated" 10% buff widening a gap between UH and Blood and now it's 15% of course. Is this the main reason for Blood falling behind at this gear level if it is even? I remember reading at the beginning of ICC that Blood was going to be the dominant tree for Single Target DPS of the two 2-Handed Trees. Is this completely not true at all anymore?
All current evidence has UH winning out on DPS meters, yes. The cap was actually higher before the 15% buff and SM becoming more common, but it's still there as a quick check of WoL can prove.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
The difference is marginal at best. If you prefer playing as blood then by all means do it. In multi target scenarios you will do less damage as blood, but in ICC there is no Fight where it matters. For the Valkyrs Blood is actually really strong with the cleave and DRW burst in case of emergency. I don't have experience on the LK hardmode tough.
03/25/10, 4:09 PM
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