Another question, I just recently switched from Unholy to blood, I've got the stats to really support it now.

I did some naxx 25, Vault 25, and Udular 25 last night, and something I noticed is that I absolutely cannot stick to the prescribed dps rotation listed by the op unless it really is a true patchwerk style fight. If the tank moves the boss for a second and I'm out of melee range and miss the opportunity to use an attack, or the fight requires me to attack another target, or move out, or any number of things that can interrupt me, I lose my cycle.

Now, I could stick to it if I sat their auto swinging waiting for things to reset just right, but that to me feels like a DPS loss, so what I started doing was basically a prioritized based rotation. Keep diseases up, if U/F runes are up I deathstrike, I then use as many death/blood runes for heart strikes as I can till the last second before diseases fall off. This is leaving me with very, very limited instances where I have the time to fire off a Deathcoil, I think going through 5 rune bars worth of runes I maybe have the time to fire off 3-4 deathcoils. So unless I'm doing this wrong, it seems to me that Awareness sigil is equal or perhaps better than vengeful, though, I could just be bad and uncomfortable with blood atm.

Am I doing it right? If not, could I get some suggestions, I haven't seen this mentioned in the thread till maybe 2 posts before mine, but I know there's gotta be more people that are not able to stick to the exact dps rotation listed by the op in alot of Udular 25 fights.

EDIT: Btw i'm not begging for hand holding, I've played this game since 2004 november, I know a prioritized dps rotation is > than a set in stone one. I was trying to be polite and not act like a know it all and give someone the opportunity to speak up about it.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis First night ever as blood dps, feel free to armory me and look at my only 2 BIS pieces. That was with a prioritized rotation, not the one set in stone, and I tanked phase 1 in frost pres, 3 lights in the dark.

The blood rotation is strict and with the movement intensive fights in Ulduar, pretty unforgiving. If you are having trouble with this I'd suggest putting 2 points in epidemic if you haven't already to 'loosen' up the rotation a bit. It will help you with the learning curve.

I assure you that even with 1 point in epidemic the rotations are quite doable in Ulduar.

Even so, having done the above myself, I still prefer two points in epidemic because despite the fact that it is less than optimal on paper it is quite useful in a practical sense.

Vengeful heart is good not just because of your rune dump with death coil, but because of your free death coils from heartstrike. So, one of the primary reasons to keeping the rotation tight and consistent is to pump out as many of those heartstrikes as possible.

You'll just have to learn it

There are a couple fights in Ulduar where a parry chance is something that can't be avoided. Kologarn and Auriaya come to mind in particular. That being said, in reference to the post you replied to, it would still be silly to try and cap Expertise for parry to increase the value of armor penetration.

Kologarn doesn't parry and you can always sit behind Auriaya and jump in front of her just before she finishes her cast. Even if this wasn't the case, stacking expertise for those two fights alone is a terrible, wretched idea given how boringly easy they are.

Stacking expertise in an attempt to overcome or better prevent dodge/parry against Kologarn/Auriaya is a terrible idea given the ease of the encounters and the very very low DPS check to succeed. Given that these bosses have no hard mode makes this statement even more true.

Completely forgot about the free deathcoil. Thanks for the tips.

So doing a priority type rotation is a bad idea, and I should probably drop another point in epidemic and hope that when I have to move away from the boss/or do aoe on the fly (freya) its only long enough to make it back in under 4-5 seconds or just enough rune usage to get back in and complete the rotation.

And if i'm out longer than 4-5 seconds/or use runes for aoe, just auto-attack and wait for the rotation to set itself up again, got it.

Might want to DS earlier than that imo so that you have at least your first two HS buffed by abom might, and DCing mid rotation is not quite as efficient unless you're about to go over RP cap. Just some food for thought.

I run with a Marks hunter so Abom might is not a issue for me. And as far as Dc in the middle of the rotation after the fist Ds you have time to Dcx1 and even after the first Dc you still have about .5 seconds left till you can Ds again, But at the end of the rotation after one Dc you can either Ps to start the rotation or Dc again, Either way i think the difference is really small

I've been using Sigil of the Vengeful Heart and 2PC T8 and thus I try to dump up to 25 RP after every rune rotation. I guess I'll have to go back and re-check to see if it's still worth it to do so or not.

Also, missed something with zeheres. Read his posts again:
To me it would appear that he doesn't realize Expertise reduces Dodge chance, and that a mob can Dodge from behind.

Well he edited his post, so I think he's aware of dodge now. The larger issue is one that we'd hoped to leave behind in the old thread, which is the value of expertise capping. The short answer to Zeheres' question is that ArP gives you no advantage when you are dodged, but it increases your damage on all the other attacks that you land.

I think the best entry on this topic is *this one* from Tetracycloide in the old thread. Ultimately trading 1 expertise rating for 1 ArP or 1 Str will increase your average dps. How much expertise you decide to trade for a chance to do more damage ultimately depends on your own preferences and comfort level.

Just wanted to weigh in on the expertise discussion. I know that with various sims and spreadsheets the hierarchy of stats is Str > ArPen > Expertise (before cap). Therefore, the argument has always been that you should invariably gem for Str. There are theoretical levels of AP (the magic 6200 AP that you here quoted ever so often) where it becomes more advantageous to gem ArPen versus Str, but I think the feeling is that at a certain gear level the differences are so close its hard to convincingly prove one versus the other. However, one thing I did want to point out in the case of expertise is that Blood more so than the other DK specs gets hurt particular hard not being at or close to the 25-26 expertise cap. Generally, we are using more GCDs per rune cycle (compared to say Unholy with SS glyph) and depending on how many points in Epidemic you have an errant dodge can mean the difference between 1 or 2 blood strikes without diseases up.

I picked up a few upgrades in 25 Uldaur, gaining about 10% ArPen while losing 9 expertise. Its a fairly noticeable drop since being at 22 expertise before it almost doubles the amount of dodges I have to deal with. Now once I finally get the T8 chest this should be negated somewhat, but looking at the gear combinations it seems stacking ArPen makes you come up short from the expertise cap. I'm thinking in this scenario where you are just 1 or 2 points away an odd expertise gem here or there might be worthwhile, moreso than a calculator might indicate. If anything the annoyance factor of dodges in the middle of your rotation would be worth getting rid of.

There is nothing wrong with going for the expertise soft cap; but again, it becomes a matter of personal preference, and will lower your *potential* dps if you sacrifice better stats. Depending on your individual skill, comfort level, and playing style, you may actually notice an improvement from dropping ArP for exp. But it's important to note in this dps forum that to maximize your *potential* for dmg dealing, you should go for stats like Str and ArP.

It's analogous to swinging for the fences vs. slap-hitting for average. The first way, your potential to hit a monster home run is greater, but you're also more likely to miss completely. You have to decide whether you want an easier ssmoother fight with consistently good dmg, or a more complex unpredictable fight that requires you to work hard and be on your toes to maximize even higher potential dmg.

I think it's safe to say that although there is a theoretical dps hierarchy of Str > ArP > Exp, there will not be a consensus because of this personal choice component. So there's really not much point discussing it beyond understanding the differing merits of each approach.

More interesting numbers for DRW:
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
HS and DC damage average is far less than 50%. Melee DRW weapon damage was over 50%, but only slightly. So, this indicates that the heart strikes when using DRW shouldn't have been weaker than the other heart strikes.
But ok, here's some of the numbers:
Avg HS hit is 3394, avg DRW hit is 837. Same crit rate (both 45%). Max crit normal HS 10306, max DRW HS crit 2170.
Melee swing: Avg 3010, DRW 1635. No necrosis or BCB from DRW
Death coils: 3546 avg hit, DRW 728 avg hit.

I see a pattern here.
Uptime: Dancing Rune Weapon 3 casts Duration 00:46 17% uptime
Total damage done by DRW: 74504
Percentage of damage done: 4,8%.
DRW glyph gives him 3x5 sec = 15 seconds of free DRW time. 31 seconds remaining uptime from casts, means 3 casts x 5 seconds base = 15 seconds at the cost of 120 runic power. 16 more seconds x 10 runic power each = 160 runic power. 280 runic power used in total.
With his deathcoils hitting for 5475 damage on averageo n that fight means that he could have cast 7 more death coils given that he had the GCD for them. That's 38325 damage.
Now, the real increase in damage is 36179 compared to death coils. That's 2,35% damage increase and 4 GCD less during 4 minutes and 22 seconds.

Now, the question is, is the number on DRW as high because of timing of DRW or is it just a coincidence?
Is 2,35% increase in damage and 1 GCD per minute worth a glyph and a talent point? If we didn't have a glyph, the uptime would have been reduced to 31 seconds only, and a decrease of 32-ish% of damage done from DRW. Now it's getting hard to see if it's worth it, it's around 0,8% damage increase.

I'm not saying this is exact math, but this is a pretty decent DPS number he has for Vezax (one of the top on normal Vezax 25 man on WMO)

Top Vezax hard mode WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
Time 8 minutes 4 seconds.
DRW damage: 149526
DRW %: 5,1%.

Dancing Rune Weapon 5 casts 01:32 uptime 19%
DRW glyph = 25 seconds free, 67seconds remaining. 5 casts x 5 seconds = 25 more seconds off and 200 runic power spent. 42 seconds left x 10 rp per second = 420 rp. Spent 620 runic power on DRW. That's 15,5 DCs.
Avg death coil damage. 4964. Total potential DC damage = 76942.
(149526 - 76942) / 2 920 017 = 2,49% real increase with glyph.
Let's lop off a healthy 25 seconds off it. Gives us a reduction of 27,2%. That's a calculated estimate of roughly 108894 damage.
(108894 - 76942) / 2 920 017 = 1,1% increased damage compared to death coils.
He did save 10,5 GCDs during those 8 minutes and 4 seconds though.
Are 3 talent points worth 1,1% increased damage (or actually, of your damage done, so more like 1,2% increase in damage) and a bit over 1 GCD per minute? Is the glyph worth 1,4% of your damage done?

In my opinion DRW isn't really all that superior to DC spam. And these are under pretty decent situations when we're talking about good timing of DRW and probably no time lost DPSing. (last link was number one on damage on Vezax hard mode on WMO).
At least, it's not exactly 1% damage increase per point

If I look at my own numbers I just don't see the same thing. Going by our Heartbreaker kill last night my DRW did 203,343 damage through six casts giving it an average of 33,891 damage per cast. My DC did 5,282 damage per cast, so if every DRW is worth 2.5 DC's (13,206 damage on average) I'm gaining 20k damage per DRW cast over DC per minute and a half, or roughly 230 DPS. If I'm missing something let me know, I'm no math wiz, but I'd say you certainly don't gain anything from DC spam over just using DRW.

I see several issues with your argument.

1) Our three standard DPS glyphs are Dark Death, Death Strike, and DRW. You have demonstrated the value of the DRW glyph is ~1.4% more damage in these cases. For your argument to be complete, you need to demonstrate the value of the Ghoul, Disease, and UB glyphs in comparison. I have strong doubts that either of the first two are comparable.

2) You have demonstrated that unglyphed DRW is a DPS increase over DC spam, and though not massive it is still significant. Observing the first case, you have a single talent point with which to make up that difference. You have not pointed to any places where that point might be spent for a comparable gain.

Essentially you have the foundation of a potentially strong argument against DRW, but you haven't actually built anything on it. You need to prove that you have an alternative that is superior, not close to as good.

It's even simpler than that. I have yet to see 2 Deathcoils (or 3 if you specced RPM) do more damage as a DRW on the same amount of runic power. This is mostly because if you use DRW properly, as laid out in many of the above posts, you can boost it's damage much further than anything you will get with a Death Coil.

Swarly: On heartbreaker, that is a special case where you pop hysteria + DRW + everything on heart. Of course it's going to be biased towards. Of course DRW is superior on that fight.

Darian: True, there might not be better alternatives for glyphs. Disease have been brought up as an alternative, and it might be enough of an increase. Need to fetch the data for the value of disease.
And yes, there might not be some talent point that increases it's damage by the same amount, but it's not impossible. Night of the Dead isn't impossible, and maybe BCB or necrosis for those who skipped a point there?

Soilant: I think you should reread my post. 3 casts which costs a total of 120 rp as a base (40 each). Then I calculate the number of seconds and see how much RP is being used on those 3 casts. I have not said anything about a single 120 rp, and as you saw, I calculated to a total of 280 rp used on three casts.

The reason why I chose Vezax is that it's a pretty straight forward hard mode where DPS is essential to the fight and nothing to gain extra damage on. Ignis and XT have been posted as candidates, but XT has the obvious fault in that it has the heart. Ignis might be better, but you might get slagpotted and that screwing with your numbers. Also, Ignis is a shorter fight and insignificant on DPS.

The question isn't really if DRW is a DPS increase by taking that talent point, but when I list some of the highest DPS from WMO on Vezax, I assume they know how to time DRW well (and as you see, avg hit for DRW was higher than avg normal melee hit = better conditions for DRW).

The point is that you have to make sure you time those cooldowns accordingly to maximize DRW when you could use them in a better time. Let's say your trinket, FC and greatness procced, but it's 30 seconds left before DRW is ready, but your hysteria just became ready. The problem here is that you lose a potential good DPS window if you save hysteria for later use, or if you have to hold DRW usage until next time the trinkets procs together with FC and you then can use ERW. You have more freedom in using your cooldowns when not including DRW, and you don't need to make sure you have enough RP for when that happens. And of course, you lose potential DS damage if you cast DS right after DRW because you just spent all your RP.
Now, this may sound like I think it's alot of job on paper, but I know it's jsut a matter of thinking and doing automatically. Of course, you can choose to NOT use DRW and still have the talent point there since there's no better use of that talent point and glyph.
I understand that there are times when CDs get to cool down and you benefit more from DRW (like for example Mimiron, but then again, you might lose potential time by having to move). I see the hard modes where it might be useful, but others it might not.
It's a choice, and not using DRW is a valid reason. If I'm leading a raid, chances are that I will miss a window of oppurtunity for casting DRW and maximizing it.

In short for the last part:

• Choice of another glyph (disease or ghoul for example)
• Another talent point (NotD, epidemic, blood worms, impurity, UB, outbreak or dirge)
• No change of rotation (like either losing potential damage on that DS or a change of that rotation)
• Being able to time cooldowns easier

can be more valuable than the increase that DRW gives in many situations, but maybe not all.

It's far from nailing the coffin, and I think a discussion on it is healthy since it's not a clear cut better choice in my opinion.

The fact is that it has been shown that NONE of those things you listed are more valuable to your DPS than DRW. If you are leading a raid and can't be bothered to figure out how to time your DRW and just want to be able to DC spam, fine, go nuts. THIS is not the place to make extrodinarily long posts on how to raid when you can't/won't be bothered to keep track of cooldowns, procs, etc.

Your point about having to not use Hysteria b/c DRW isn't up yet is not a valid one. If you arent DRW'ing sure you can Hysteria whenever you want, and you wont get nearly the benefit from it that you would had it been used in conjuction with DRW.

They don't allow discussion of Auto-Hunter macros here either for the same reason. Ease of play does not equate to increase in DPS. DRW has been shown to be superior for Blood specs than all other available options. If you can do some modeling/simulation/long division to show us a way to increase Blood DPS by foregoing DRW, then that is a welcome discussion. "If I'm leading a raid, chances are that I will miss a window of oppurtunity for casting DRW and maximizing it" is not a valid reason to suggest passing up DRW, and any discussion about it wastes forum space.

The point I'm trying to say that when this is done, as it obviously has been done in the two parses I posted earlier, it's not that big a benefit as you wanted it to be. I'm takign numbers from their parses. I can probably go through Ignis parses as well since it's the only other straight forward fight.
I posted a sim, there it said that DRW was worse than DC spam. Then I posted parses from a pretty straight forward boss except for slower melee speed, but it's of actual importance and people try to maximize DPS. Then that's wrong as well.
Yes, of course that it's easier isn't the main point here, as in automatic macros and stuff like that. But it does affect the outcome.
I will get the numbers for the example here, but alot of it isn't really theorycraftable, like that DRW when procs all coincide and all buffs are aligned. I showed that the increase of taking DRW, the talent point, was worth about 1% more damage done. If you sacrifice necrosis or BCB, then it's not really worth it.
I went to look up Foxx's post that you referred to in the OP, and yes, disease might not be worth it. Glyph of the Ghoul might not be worth it either. I'll try to gather up the numbers for a bigger calculation on Friday

Ayven, top blood on mimiron hard mode
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish DRW is 3,8%, significantly less than Vezax
Some Korean guy, highest blood on hard mode Assembly of Iron:
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish DRW is 4,1% of his damage on that fight
Apeshat, highest on Ignis WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish DRW 4,8% of his damage during that fight
Some TW guy, highest Hodir blood spec:
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish DRW is 2,4% of his damage here
Highest on Freya Hard mode Rubee WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish No DRW
Sipher, second highest on Freya hard mode: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish DRW is 3,7% of his damage here
Vhalkor, highest blood on Yogg-saron WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish DRW is 3,0% of his damage here
Mavet, highest Blood on Thorim hardmode WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
DRW is 3,8% of his total damage done.
korean highest Blood on XT hardmode: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
DRW is here 10,8% of his total damage done.

All in all, you're accusing me of choosing a fight that's values DRW lower than other fights, when it's quite the opposite. There's only one fight where DRW is higher than Vezax, and that's on XT. I will punch through some mroe numbers on Friday.

You can't say the -20% haste on Vezax has to be taken into consideration, and then turn around and say the burst DPS on XT's heart can't. If you're going to claim that we need to consider situations where DRW has handicaps, you must to accept that we also need to consider situations where it has significant boosts.

You also can't take that particular, handicapped fight and apply it as a generalization to all fights either without accounting for handicap. Yes, for that fight you showed that DRW as a talent point is only a 1% increase if you don't have the glyph, but that can't be applied to all other fights unless you account for the fact that 10% or more of the DRW's damage was lost to the -20% haste.

I look forward to your completed example.

I posted some more numbers for you. And yes, indeed 20% does effect DRW by 10%, if not more. You see that I added the other fights of interest (I added Ignis as only non-hardmode because it's so basic fight).
The list of usefulness goes from:
XT hm 10,8%
Vezax hm 5,1%
Ignis (not hard mode) 4,8%
Assembly of Iron hm 4,1%
Thorim hm 3,8%
Mimiron hm 3,8%
Freya hm 3,7% (DRW-less with permaghoul won here as nr 1 blood)
Yogg-saron 3,0%
Hodir 2,4%

Why are you still trying to push something that's been beaten to death for months?

As far as your "proof" by linking WMO parses - please actually look at them before posting them as evidence. Some of these are outright modified and/or incorrectly processed logs (doubling abilities, look for "Imburnt from <Distortion> on the Proudmoore US server" and marvel at how his runes must refresh twice as fast as any other DK in the world as well as having a 0.75 second global cooldown). For instance, your ignis parse is a prime example of a guild trying to inflate their DPS to push them up on the DPS scoreboard by bringing all the adds on top of Ignis so they can be AOE'd on top of the boss for maximum loldps. Is this DPS important or relevant to this fight AT ALL? No.

Damage Done Total
Ignis the Furnace Master 1,151,731
Iron Construct 433,248

If you lop off all the retarded epeen flexing this guild is trying to pull off by removing the Iron Construct damage, this guy falls under 6k DPS which wouldn't even register on the scoreboard. On top of that it pushes his contribution from Rune Weapon to almost 11% of his dmg to Ignis done.

Please note that for Epeen-ing Ignis, that there is one blood DK on the actual scoreboard (he's #19), the top DK is a full 3500 DPS above him.

If your argument by linking these posts (lol Freya Hardmode, Thorim etc) is that DRW isn't up to par on these encounters from a OVERALL damage perspective then sure. UB would potentially outdo DRW on these fights. But at that point, you're speccing for the AOE portion of encounters, which while somewhat relevant, is the least important part of the fight in most situations. In situations where the AOE *IS* important (i.e. Freya Hardmode), and you want to spec around that - then why stop at UB? Just go full out unholy and do the job better than a blood spec that gimps its single target output (arguably higher in almost ALL fights than Unholy) to gain more AOE capability.

The top Freya HM DK is unholy and is a full 1000 DPS over the nearest Blood DK (who has 3 other Unholy above him). I know when attempting Freya HM, that blood is not the ideal route to go - so I spec Unholy for it and glyph for Death and Decay and faceroll to the top of the meters with Death and Decaying critting on multiple targets EVERY second for 3,000 a pop, on top of UB and diseases and Wandering Plague ticking for almost 2k.

Thorim Hard Mode? What matters here? The adds with low HP that a single downs-syndrome rogue can AOE down with Fan of Knives ? Or when Thorim jumps into the Arena and you actually have a dps race on your hands. When I dps this fight, I'm not very high on the overall meters - but always #1 or #2 on the actual BOSS.

Hodir? Blood is terrible on this fight - getting UB won't change that. If you want to top the meters here, go frost. Rune Weapon doesn't get the Storm Power debuff, gimping a large portion of your damage output. On top of that, the buff is crit based, and blood DPS gear is historically low on crit in Ulduar. Furthermore, you get the least benefit out of the NPC's buffs in this, as you gain very little from Toasty Fire, and standing in the Moonkin's beams doesn't increase the number of Killing Machine procs you get, increasing your crit chance on a magical ability further (like Frost).

Yogg? What matter more to you? Single target dps on the brain to bring him into phase 3, or add DPS?

Not sure why you're blood - I spec blood because I enjoy what I bring to the raid which is maximum single target dps, to bring bosses down. Again, if you're more interested in padding dps meters by AOE'ing garbage than please do take UB, but please go all the way and spec 50+ into Unholy as 50/0/21 doesn't even pick up impurity, or any of the other talents that boost your AOE ability.

I could go on about your examples but I won't - so far I have seen nothing new presented, just the same old tired arguments. It's always good to try out new things, and look at something from another perspective, but until there are some major overhauls to talent trees or abilities, this horse has been beaten. Move along please.