Astalion

Using the spec Yubble listed (well, slightly different, no points in Icy Talons, allowing me to pick up Deathchill and some utility talents), my simulations still have it coming in just behind (really just behind, about 10 dps in a 500h/200ms test) the 3/51/17 spec.
Of course, the second spec has other advantages such as HB for proper aoe dps, threat reduction from Subversion, it brings 20% haste, and you don't have to worry about keeping your ghoul up either.

 

Maraxus

Totally agree with you Yubble.

And the build you just posted would be the way to go if your guild lets you be the "egoist DPSer" :-P.

@Astalion: What was your rotation?, which glyphs did you use?, what presence?. To me, its really hard to belive that a 3/51/17 build can out DPS the 0/45/26 build on a single target fight. I will do some testing too.

I will try the build with both dirge and chill of the grave plus glyph of FS and 4xT7 in UP. The RP generation looks just.... amazing. Perhaps THIS build would beat the perma-ghoul build on single target DPS in UP. Looks good.

 

Astalion

Glyphs as in the linked spec: Ghoul, Oblit, FS. Blood Presence gave me better results, as expected. FF>BP>OB>BS>FS.

Just looking at what talents you trade:
Subversion: 9% crit to ~37% of your total damage (around 7% more OB damage, 8% more BS)
TS: +15% damage to ~75% of your total damage, +the expertise
Howling Blast to make use of Rime procs (HB is quite close to FS damage, and will fill most empty GCDs while you're out of RP)
vs
PermaGhoul ~10% of your total damage
Dirge: seems to give around 10% more FSs (the build is already close to GCD capped, especially if you have HB)
3p Impurity: Only affects IT/FF/BP, seems like roughly 10% more damage to these (and they, in turn, make up ~8% of our damage).

Rough calculations of the above talents: 2.6% damage from Subversion, 11.3% from TS (without Expertise included) vs 0.8% from 3/5 Impurity, 10% from PermaGhoul, and also the 1p BCB would add around 0.7%.
HB Rime procs seem to be worth slightly more than the extra RP from Dirge as well, but I didn't test that to any greater degree.

Edit: I also tested dropping IIT and picking up full KM+DC for a more selfish version of 3/51/17, which obviously pulls ahead further (a bit over 100 dps ahead of the ghoul spec) than my previous testing.

 

phantazum

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=10072

10 man 4 horseman fight. Awareness, 178 and 143 dps 2.6 weapons FC/FC. Only Wrathstone and ghoul cooldowns were used.

Rotation
2x dots, HS, HS, OB, FS, FS
OB, FS, OB, OB, FS, FS

Our tank didn't know how to do Sapp then the raid fell apart. So i didnt get to test the FS ghoul build. PTR is a hard place to Test anything...

I was wondering something. Why would anyone go 3/51/17? Whats beyond 15 on the unholy tree that you would drop anything from the frost tree for? Nearest i can tell would be 2 points in to BCB but that dps boost cant compare to CotG and MC or am i mistaken?

I really loved this build and rotation. Its got strong aoe when needed and if you dont use howling blast procs it still has enough run generation to keep the frost strikes coming. Since i didn't put any points in cooldowns all the points are spent in raw power and this helps keep the build and rotations simple. Ran OS 10 and pulled 4658. Still no testing with the Ghoul build, OS isnt a friendly place for pets.

 

Odii

Well technically, Rime procs should be used proactively, as long as your RP is below a certain threshold.

The simulator is going to slightly underutilize the Rime procs to fill GCDs, as its going to be reactive instead of proactive about the usage.

 

pintor

Killing Machine Procs

One thing that struck me as odd is that currently killing machine only affects the main hand attack. Which means that using KM for frost strike will only proc a critical strike on the main hand FS, but not the offhand. For builds that will not be using Howling Blast this does not have any consequences as Icy Touch is still less damage than FS. However, with builds that do use HB, it may be appropriate to use a killing machine proc during rime.

According to my simulator data and napkin math, assuming full ulduar BiS, HB only does more damage than FS if it is a critical and FS does not crit with both hands (i.e. crit/non-crit), otherwise it is nearly equal (in the case of crit/crit). Additionally, HB never does more damage than Obliterate if Obliterate crits with its main hand.

This raises a few questions. Should Howling Blast be used, if off cooldown replacing obliterate, or on a rime proc, with killing machine? The latter seems to be that we should use howling blast with rime/KM since you cannot guarantee a critical with the offhand on frost strike. Therefore, even though we could potentially get a crit from FS on the offhand, it would still only potentially equal the damage of the howling blast.

Assuming HB is a 100% critical strike, we should evaluate when it would be optimal to use it over obliterate, using the potential crits from obliterate.

As an example, lets say that Obliterate crits an average of 8000 on the main hand with 4000 normal average. Additionally, it crits for 4000 on the offhand with 2000 normal average.

Howling blast crits for an average of 10000. I chose these numbers to represent the fact that if obliterate crits with its main hand it does more damage than (or equal to in the case of crit/non-crit) HB but otherwise HB does more.

If you have 30% crit after horn of winter but before other modifiers, then the average damage is:

Howling Blast: 10000 (100% critical strike)

Obliterate: MH (8000*[0.30+0.09(subversion)+0.03(annihilation)+0.15(rime)+0.05(leader of the pack etc.)])+ (4000*0.38)= 6480
OH (4000*0.62)+(2000*0.38)= 3240
=9720 average damage

In this case of made up numbers, we should replace Obliterate in the rotation with HB only if KM procced. The model suggests that there is a value of critical strike rating (I am not sure about how AP/ArP interact with obliterate and HB, but I am sure there is something there too) to which this becomes no longer true (in my example it is at 67% crit).

Given what I have been looking at, I might advise using a rime proc with KM, but I suppose using a KM with HB in place of obliterate is still up in the air (and ultimately will depend on your gear levels).

 

Beertruck

In 3.1, my favorite playstyle is glyphed HB 17/51/3. However it has some major drawbacks, namely that it lacks RP without the T7 bonus, and it is subpar single target dps. In 3.2 I find that it no longer suffers an RP shortage, and it offers competitive DPS to the best builds mentioned above. The key is re-prioritizing your playstyle. This is the build I used 15/53/3.

Recall, in 3.1 we used FS on KM procs, and we used HB only if Rime had procced and diseases were about to fall off. In 3.2, HB is by far my hardest hitting attack, so I use HB instead of FS for KM procs (assuming HB is up, if not use FS). In addition, I use HB on every Rime proc. This has the effect of generating alot more runeless RP than in 3.1, since we are prioritizing HB. When I find myself RP capping (even without T7 bonus) I just hold off on using Rime until disease is about to expire, and instead substitute OB if no KM is up.

I have only tested on the dummy (yes I know, you Sim guru's can take over from here), but I expect this build will be competitive in the real world. We are using our GCD's for our hardest hitting attacks, and we dont have to worry about IT stealing KM procs. Not to mention I expect this will be our highest AoE dps spec by far.

This build is spiky on RNG. If you have a long string of no Rime procs at the beginning of the fight, you may be short on RP and have a second or two of idle time. Also, if your FS's are eating alot of KM's, you will be a little lower DPS, or higher if not. Anyway, give it a shot.

Edit: Pintor's post ties in nicely with what I posted. I think you definitely would use HB on KM procs as I do in my priority.

 

Veala

This is a good idea, but I think you need to adjust your model slightly. Rather than comparing a guaranteed Crit HB to a normal Obliterate, you should be comparing a 100% crit HB + a normal FS to a normal OB + 100% mainhand crit FS. This would need to be further adjusted to account for the possibility that you would get another KM proc before your next FS (This may even be what you originally considered), but I believe you also have to take into account the opportunity cost of using the KM proc on HB instead of FS.

With a Rime procced HB it's definitely a little more black and white, since your FS only has a chance equal to your crit chance of doing more damage than HB with that KM proc. Might even put a KM Rime HB at the top of the priority list.

 

Sakuratei

I'm kinda half hoping that the current state of Killing Machine is bugged. Cold Blood has the same mechanic (Only that it is activate on demand) and it works fine with Mutilate, generating a double crit.

Sometimes I noticed that not even the mainhand FS would crit when Killing Machine was up, often enough for me to think something else ate the proc.

 

Whatevr

I got on the PTR today and did 10man VoA testing on the new boss.

I ran with the 0/45/26 spec.

I used 2x [Razorscale Talon] with FC main RI off and using Vengeful Heart (i left my awareness in the bank my accident)

I'm using 3 pieces of t8 and geared mainly for blood since that's my main spec on live.
Buffs were Kings, Might, Mark, and Flask+mixology.

My rotation was:
IT - PS - OB - BS x 2 - Dump
OB x 3 - Dump
Add in AMS at some point towards the end of one of the rotations when standing in a fire.

I ran Blood presence at first and it was pretty decent. I was around 4500 +/-50 for the first 3 attempts. The last few attempts and during the kill I went unholy and the dps completely shot up. I hit 5100 when I died. I'm not saying unholy is better overall but i think unholy is definitely better depending on the fight. The main reason for why it was better for this fight was because there was such a large amount of RP generation with AMS and a resto druid healing. This allowed me to get a lot of FS off during AMS soak and between each rotation. If you guys would like to know the stats I was running with I can update this with what I used on the PTR.

 

pintor

You are correct, I did not account for the fact that KM is no longer being allowed to be applied to a FS. An oversight on my part. With that taken into account, you would be hard pressed to find a realistic value of crit that is low enough to make it worthwhile to substitute a HB for an oblit, even with the possibility of proccing another KM.

Still, the original post stands for rime-HB v FS KM's, and I would agree that a rime+KM HB should be at the top of our priority assuming the current KM goes live.

 

mongoose221

Pintor, looking at your rough numbers (10k HB crit, 4k+2k OB hit/hit, 8k+4k OB crit/crit) you are leaving out GoG, which is a crit for 2.45%, so a 4k+2k hit/hit would be a double crit for 9800+4900 crit/crit due to the %bonus modifier. So using a 4k+2k hit/hit, you would have 9800+2k for crit/hit and 4k+4900 on a hit/crit. I know you stated that even a MH OB crit makes OB > a crit HB, but this just widens the cap if your HB's are averaging 10k.

 

pintor

I think you missed the point a bit. I was only using made up numbers to illustrate how things might play out crit wise. I was not using any damage modifiers. In the case of GoG any damage modifier is also applied to howling blast so it doesn't matter. I used numbers that were easy to work with (making crits double a normal hit) but the gap would be the same for both. So, sorry to be confusing it was just an illustration of the type of thing that could occur given certain gear levels, not an actual representation. I need to run the actual numbers (and am doing so at the moment).

edit: I reran the numbers with all modifiers using raid buffs, raid AP, etc. It looks like the only way that howling blast should be used in place of an obliterate in our rotation is if you have less than 8% crit unbuffed. So, not very likely at all. On the other hand, as I suspected howling blast procced from rime with KM is much much better than using Frost Strike with KM, and this is independent of crit levels and using the modifier from the frost strike sigil as well. Likely this scenario (HB+rime+KM) should be very high on the priority list.

 

Khaosknight

I noticed this too. Is it possible that the 4 piece bonus for t9 (disease crits) can eat up the proc? because if so that would explain it alot.

 

Lazengann

It seems to me that 2 piece Tier 8 combined with 2 piece Tier 9 set bonuses would maximize damage, unless of course that non-set pieces would wind up being better. The Frost Strike crit chance/AP seems it'll be much more worth it than more OB damage or DoT crits for DW. Of course, this speculation could all just be poppy cock when it hits live but I think the stat loss would be worth it.

 

zeheres

I assume you have exact numbers for the T9P4 bonus already or how can you say it won't be worth it?

Death knights are the only current Hero class, which means they are supposed to be the best class in the game.

 

Foxx2405

I haven't done calculations (I could but im at work atm). But be aware you dont undervalue the 4xT9.

Dots atm can't crit at all, and with 40% spellcrit (which i assume is reasonable for T9 content ?), it already increases DoT damage by 40%.
Checking Phantazums recount a few posts up and dots did about 6.4% damage, increasing that by 40% would mean roughly 2.6% more dps.

8% extra frost strike crit is awesome, but keep in mind that due to KM it already has a very high average crit chance. Say it has a 60% crit chance already, increasing that by 8% would mean:

168% / 160% * 100 = 105% damage. A 5% frost strike damage increase.

If frost strike is 25% of your damage (again using Phantazums recount just because its there), that means a 1.25% dps increase.

These are mostly made up (but i assume somewhat realistic) numbers that just imply that "at first sight" can be decieving.

 

Astalion

I'm not giving up CotG or MC, instead I'm taking either 2 points out of KM (this seems to come out as a dps gain, but I'm not sure whether prioritizing KMs on Rime procs would change that) if I have to provide IIT, else I'm just dropping IIT, getting full KM, 2p BCB, DC, and some random utility talents for max dps. (Something like this build would get 2 BCB without sacrificing any dps talent other than IIT, and is giving me the best simulator results out of quite a few deep frost variants, ~7050 dps in a 200ms test using BiS 3.1 gear + 3.2 gems)

@Odii: Yeah, obviously, and that would just push a build with HB even further ahead than what the simulations are showing.

 

bodari

Do we wanna get a grab on slow weapons?
Atm ive got [Void Sabre] and [Remorse]

I dont wanna equip one of those in offhand?

 

zeheres

You do not want to equip these at all, neither MH nor OH. Slow/Slow is all the way to go.

Death knights are the only current Hero class, which means they are supposed to be the best class in the game.

 

Sakuratei

I wasn't wearing T9 as I copied my own character and haven't been able to enter any raid groups. I will do some more testing at some point when I have time, specifically to see if I actually saw it right or if I was tired/unfocused/etc.

ALthough, the discussion about KM and HB inclines toward the possibility that they took FS out of KM to make HB more attractive in a Frost build's rotation.

 

Foxx2405

I was actually wondering about this part before.

Slow weapons are better if you have the choice, its fairly obvious.

Slow weapons give slightly more strike damage, and a higher KM uptime (due to ppm mechanics).
Fast weapons dont really give anything unless you consider BCB in which case they have a slightly higher BCB damage.

However when you DON'T have the choice, does a higher DPS fast weapon not beat a lower DPS slow weapon ?

All the DK attacks are normalized, in other words. The damage you gain on strikes from slow weapons compared to fast weapons is ONLY the difference in base damage from the weapon itself.
Comparing [Void Sabre] with [Malice] for example and the damage difference is about 230 damage. On an offhand that difference is half.

I have the feeling that if the choice is between a 160 dps slow 1h and a 180 dps fast 1h, the latter is better.

Again when you can get slow, definitely get it. The strike damage increase (though small does add up fast), and the higher KM proc rate (and all other PPM mechanics for that matter) certainly has benefit too.

I'm wondering though, do DPS and stats outbenefit speed when the upgrade is sufficient ?
An example is if you have [Silent Crusader] and [Remorse] drops. Does 20 dps outbenefit the loss of speed. Or how about [Razorscale Talon] vs [Remorse] ?

The reason im posting this is because back with the 32/38 specs people were screaming that you HAD TO HAVE slow weapons because of the amount of strikes you'd do. However several people (one of which was me) simply calculated that speed really isn't that much of an impact due to normalization.

Now of course the new duel wield is different, from what i see there are a lot more strikes and with the offhand striking too now, its a whole new ballpark. It could very well be that speed > all (to a certain degree of course)

 

zeheres

All I wanted to say is that if you have the chance you should definitely go for Slow/Slow since he asked ("I dont wanna equip one of those in offhand?"). I cannot judge if a fast 180 DPS weapon would be outperforming a slow 160 DPS weapon, since I havn't compared these before (it likely would I guess, but I won't recommend it as I lack definite results).

Edit:
I will edit this post later today again and post what I got. I'll be comparing Malice/Razorscale Talon vs. Malice/Remorse.

Death knights are the only current Hero class, which means they are supposed to be the best class in the game.

 

Foxx2405

Awesome, thanks for the test.

I'll definitely try to get slow/slow and so should anyone. But the first thing i noticed when the ToT was announced (and thus the rebirth of DW builds) was that people started saying:
"Speed > Stats > DPS"

Without any decent tests or simulator to back up that statement.

I mean its obvious that slower weapons are a lot better, but so is higher dps. I remember back in 3.0 that the dps upgrade you'd get from switching from anything to Betrayer (2H axe from KT) would result in a massive dps increase simply because of the high dps.

 

aethereal

The case in question isn't the 20 dps but the base damage difference between the 2 weapons. For example, the top end damage difference between razorscale talon and remorse is 552-349 = 203. Even if you divide that value by half for offhand (ignoring NoCS), that's ~101 before modifiers per strike that is affected by ToT.

The reason why BoH was such a dps increase over everything else in naxx follows the same reasoning, for it has the highest base weapon damage.

Perhaps "weapon speed" should be replaced with a better term like base weapon damage to avoid confusion.

A 101 damage increase is tantamount to almost 600 ap ( 2.4 * 600 /14) in terms of pure weapon damage. I do recognise, however, that strikes use only a % of weapon damage for calculations while other stats such as ap affect all aspects of a DK's dps. Ultimately it all depends on the proportion of weapon damage in the said build's damage breakdown.