DW Builds 3.2 -Revenge of the Offhand - Page 20

Wrathe · 07/11/09, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Kyruski

What were you testing on or was this the simulator. Also why were you using glyphed HB? The only reason that's used is for single disease rotations. Using HB to apply your FF is a bad idea since when you apply it manually, you're using an extra rune that will most likely prevent you from using an OB.

Was testing on both, Sim for hard data, dummy for just "feeling" the rotation, watching how the disease timer/GCD interaction would work out real time.

I'd considered losing one from Dark Conviction or Virulence as well as using the HB glyph, there's many times where you've got a Rime left over from 2nd half of the rotation that you can use before starting the first, so you'd only have to spend the U rune, leaving you w/ an unused F rune you could throw at Unbreakable Armor and not have to mess w/ Blood Tap at all.

The reason I'm using HB instead of IT is I only use IT in the first half of the rotation, so I'm only losing 10 runic power but gaining all the flexibility of the HB glyph bringing extended FF for the runic dump portion of the rotation. Not to mention Rime is up enough to make that extension free, allowing me a 3rd OB in the 2nd half of the rotation. Seems to be a good sacrifice to gain that flexibility as well as 4 talent points wasted in Unholy tree to pull the same thing off.

Originally Posted by Kyruski

On another note, We need to find some set stats to use when comparing builds. People will show the DPS difference in their sims but they will also be using different stats. If we decide on one set group of stats to use, this could make it that much easier finding a build. I actually suggest having about 3 different groups of stats that we have to test with for a build so we can have a better look at the DPS of builds being compared under different stats.

I was thinking the same thing, my gear variance in my profile makes the numbers my sim spits out meaningless to you.

The only useful data then is the DPS variance between two shared rotations and priorities.

Orlgin · 07/11/09, 1:00 PM

I made the adjustment to use Epic Gems removing socket bonuses. I'm uncertain if the simulator adds the 3% Strength or if I need to add it manually so I just used the base + gear + enchant values for 0/18/53.

DPS 7267
Total Damage 2616254547 in 100 h

<Strength>1825</Strength>
<Agility>231</Agility>
<AttackPower>717</AttackPower>
<HitRating>328</HitRating>
<CritRating>659</CritRating>
<HasteRating>206</HasteRating>
<ArmorPenetrationRating>247</ArmorPenetrationRating>
<ExpertiseRating>145</ExpertiseRating>

These were stats used. If you want a comparison, you can input these stats into your own sim to determine where your build stands.

Astalion · 07/11/09, 1:01 PM

@OriginalMemnock: Did you account for Merciless Combat?

@Using UA: It does cause slight issues in your rotation even with Blood Tap. Depending on when you use it Blood Tap actually risks turning up to 2 Death Runes into Blood Runes (if you activate it while you have 2*Death Runes, use UA with one of them, you will have one Death Rune and one Blood Rune, unless they fixed that since I last tested it. The next Death Rune loss can be avoided by removing the Blood Tap buff at the right time, but basically whenever the buff fades one of your Death Runes will turn into a Blood Rune, no matter how it was turned into a Death Rune) Of course, those are avoidable, but it is something you have to keep in mind. Blood Tap will also cause your Blood/Death Rune to refresh at a different point in the rotation, but you should most likely be able to just add an extra FS in that spare GCD.

@Orlgin: The simulator adds the strength from Blood Talents (Vot3W, AM), but currently not from Ravenous Dead. This will cause some slight problems if you just add in the strength Ravenous Dead gives from your gear, as buffs add a little bit more strength that would be affected by RD.

Kyruski · 07/11/09, 1:03 PM

Originally Posted by Wrathe

Was testing on both, Sim for hard data, dummy for just "feeling" the rotation, watching how the disease timer/GCD interaction would work out real time.

I'd considered losing one from Dark Conviction or Virulence as well as using the HB glyph, there's many times where you've got a Rime left over from 2nd half of the rotation that you can use before starting the first, so you'd only have to spend the U rune, leaving you w/ an unused F rune you could throw at Unbreakable Armor and not have to mess w/ Blood Tap at all.

The reason I'm using HB instead of IT is I only use IT in the first half of the rotation, so I'm only losing 10 runic power but gaining all the flexibility of the HB glyph bringing extended FF for the runic dump portion of the rotation. Not to mention Rime is up enough to make that extension free, allowing me a 3rd OB in the 2nd half of the rotation. Seems to be a good sacrifice to gain that flexibility as well as 4 talent points wasted in Unholy tree to pull the same thing off.

That usage of UA is actually pretty nice then. But with there being 4 wasted talents in unholy, when going after an unholy subspec, there are only 2(half wasted) talent points in Vicious Strikes but those somewhat help DPS (not that much though). Epidemic helps boost DPS, so does Ravenous Dead and Necrosis. But I can see how you would feel that it is 4 wasted talents in a hybrid subspec/blood subspec.

But if this is something to try and fit the most OBs into a rotation, then potentially the Glyph of Disease (Pest Glyph) would be the best. You should potentially be able to fit 5OBs, 1BS, 1Pest, and some FS in each rotation. I'm not saying it will out perform any of the given specs in this thread, I'm just saying if we're going for most OBs, this should be what we go for.

Astalion · 07/11/09, 1:10 PM

Originally Posted by Kyruski

But if this is something to try and fit the most OBs into a rotation, then potentially the Glyph of Disease (Pest Glyph) would be the best. You should potentially be able to fit 5OBs, 1BS, 1Pest, and some FS in each rotation. I'm not saying it will out perform any of the given specs in this thread, I'm just saying if we're going for most OBs, this should be what we go for.

My early tests were using that, I ran into some problems with the timing on the third Obliterate (the one using the Death Runes) being too late, meaning the Blood Runes weren't always up in time for refreshing and so it went back to using IT/PS too often. It was still only a little bit behind the Blood Strike glyph, and definitely would be better if you don't have access to slowing effects on the target. If someone could get a priority/rotation to actually properly refresh using Pestilence each time, it could actually be better.
(Maybe something along the lines of:
Pest-BS-OB-OB-RP Dump
OB-OB-OB-RP Dump)

Kyruski · 07/11/09, 1:15 PM

Originally Posted by Astalion

My early tests were using that, I ran into some problems with the timing on the third Obliterate (the one using the Death Runes) being too late, meaning the Blood Runes weren't always up in time for refreshing and so it went back to using IT/PS too often. It was still only a little bit behind the Blood Strike glyph, and definitely would be better if you don't have access to slowing effects on the target. If someone could get a priority/rotation to actually properly refresh using Pestilence each time, it could actually be better.

I'm actually suggesting start out with BS>BS>IT>PS and then after that, doing Pest>BS>OB at the beginning for that pest should always be at the very beginning and the death run OB will be at the beginning also. This will slower DPS slightly at the beginning but it could potentially do well. One of the problems is there is no way instituted in the simulator to have a pest refresh (reliably) as far as I know.

OriginalMemnock · 07/11/09, 1:39 PM

Originally Posted by Astalion

@OriginalMemnock: Did you account for Merciless Combat?

Well as all i'm comparing is different DW frost builds, and they all use Merciless Combat, I think it becomes a moot talent for these tests. If I was comparing it to other builds, I can see where that would be an issue. My statement about it being 500+ dps more than current 2h live, I'm referring to 2h frost live which also has Merciless Combat.

@Using UA: It does cause slight issues in your rotation even with Blood Tap. Depending on when you use it Blood Tap actually risks turning up to 2 Death Runes into Blood Runes (if you activate it while you have 2*Death Runes, use UA with one of them, you will have one Death Rune and one Blood Rune, unless they fixed that since I last tested it. The next Death Rune loss can be avoided by removing the Blood Tap buff at the right time, but basically whenever the buff fades one of your Death Runes will turn into a Blood Rune, no matter how it was turned into a Death Rune) Of course, those are avoidable, but it is something you have to keep in mind. Blood Tap will also cause your Blood/Death Rune to refresh at a different point in the rotation, but you should most likely be able to just add an extra FS in that spare GCD.

I ran into this problem in my last set of tests. 1 point into Ravenous Dead still yielded higher sustained dps than using UA when it was up. My guess is that the 20 seconds out of every 2 minutes that UA is up doesn't make up for an the constant 1% strength increase. I'm sure the timing of the greatness and fallen crusader procs have a lot to do with that. Overall though I think UA might be better in raids because of the burst potential for events such as dropping X2's heart.

Astalion · 07/11/09, 2:01 PM

Some napkin math for Glyph of Disease comparison, as I still am not certain how to properly simulate it:
Average ability damage without Glyph of BS:
Obliterate - 5550*2
Plague Strike - 1324*2
Icy Touch - 3486
Blood Strike - 2372*2 (Add glyph for +20% if we're not using Disease glyph, meaning the BS*2 Rotation will get 120%+20% BS Damage over the other)
Frost Strike - 3890*2
Howling Blast - 6797

Looking at only these abilities (basically, assuming no GCD limitation and no excess RP) we get (note: this will be every 20 seconds):
11100 (Obliterate) + 1886 (27,75% of a Howling Blast, Rime proc chance with ToT) = 12986
3486 (Icy Touch) + 2648 (Plague Strike) + 6641 (Blood Strike+Glyph) + 1215 (5/32 of a Frost Strike) = 13990
GCD usage averages:
2.2775 for OB Pest + 27.75% Howling Blast
3.15625 for BS IT PS + 5/32 Frost Strikes
Judging from my simulations, it appears that around 40% of the Rime procs are actually put to use, due to lack of GCDs (Rime is lowest on my priority) and hence we should benefit from the extra free GCDs. Also of note is that if we've already got enough RP to spam FS the Disease rotation is ahead damagewise, even without any additional GCDs. I'll see if I can do some math to figure out both the RP use and the actual effect of the extra GCDs.

Edit:
Ability usage stats from a simulation (200ms), using IT as baseline for the ~20s rotation (obviously, no Disease glyph):
69439 OB Casts (~4 per IT)
17372 PS Casts (~1 per IT)
17374 IT Casts (1 per IT)
68579 FS Casts (~3.94 per IT)
4979 HB Casts (~0.287 per IT)
34657 BS Casts (~2 per IT)

The fact that HB is cast at all means that we could in fact use more RP. Averaging the amount of Rime procs, we should be getting roughly 12k (I think however, that the simulator would only be able to use at most about 8k of these, due to the IT-PS-OB-BS-BS-FS-FS part not having any possibly free GCDs, and the proc would run out before the end of the next FS spam), so assuming that's correct it appears we're limited somewhat by GCDs.
Using Pest, BS, OBx5, we should be getting roughly 1.1 HBs per 20s (separated the first and second round of OBs, 0.48 HBs during the for the Pest, BS, OBx2 part, 0.62 HBs for the OBx3 part). This is less than 1 GCD more than the simulated 0.287 HBs per IT, and as we already gain 1 GCD from using the Disease glyph, we should have no problem fitting these HBs in.
The damage benefit from HBs will then not be the above calculated 27.75% of a HB, but rather 81.3% (1.1-0.287) or 5526 damage over 20s.
This would put the total for the above calculation at 16626 damage for the Disease glyph rotation compared to 13990 for Blood Strike glyph. (132 dps difference)

Obviously, some things are simplified, and I might have made mistakes/faulty assumptions somewhere, so please point them out if you find any.

marvis · 07/11/09, 6:57 PM

Tonight I was on the ptr and i have made fantastic observations
I used the 10/54/7 with OB, IT and FS Glyphe in UP! and SoA.

My tests shows me an average dmg of 300dps to Blood Presence.

Here's a link from Recount in Unholy Presence
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8342/...1209004606.jpg

Recount 3900 dps after diseases falls off, 4300dps (in chat) was highest with cooldowns.

Qaenyin · 07/11/09, 10:36 PM

I've been running some ideas of my own and unfortunately due to blizzard not having any DW weapons available for premades on the PTR, and the fact my main has no onehanded weapons available at present, I can't test this on the PTR, and I can't code thus the simulator is something I can't make heads nor tails of, so I was curious what you all had for input on this:

I've been throwing around a couple variations of ToT+MoG Frost/Unholy DW spec, Slow/Slow. I've been debating which of the two would be more effective and if they would size up against the more standard deep frost and deep unholy builds you all have been testing.

The builds in question are

DW DC/UB using FC/FC

vs

DW Frost Strike using FC/RI

I'm assuming the Death Coil/UB would be the better of the two unless I'm missing something dramatic.

Rotation would be PS IT BS BS OB Dump, OB OB OB Dump.

Blood presence of course.

If anyone who has some free time could throw these in a sim or even just tell me flat out if I'm missing something obvious it'd be much appreciated, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a simple "spec ideas/theorizing/untested stuff" general DW thread for 3.2 where this would probably be more appropriate, else I would post there instead.

I considered subbing Subversion instead of taking Guile of Gorefiend, but ultimated figured that due to Subversion being a flat crit bonus the better scaling from crit that GoG provides would prove more beneficial.

Astalion · 07/12/09, 6:47 AM

@Qaenyin: I tried a similar spec (the FS one) a while ago (taking CotG over 2 points in Rime), it comes out a few hundred (~300) dps below the 3/51/17 spec. Death Coil just doesn't compare to ToT FS, even glyphed+UB+Morbidity DC is worse than unglyphed FS.

@marvis: This spec isn't exactly hurting for GCDs (we could use maybe 1 more every 20s, if even that), so neither theory nor simulations (I ran a few) support using UP. (Dummy tests aren't exactly a reliable method of measuring DPS)

Raidbossyo · 07/12/09, 1:59 PM

Originally Posted by Nerub

I just tried 10/54/7 during our 25man PTR raid. I used UP, the Valkyr encounter is pretty movement heavy and the number of GCDs used makes UP much more desirable than BP. I missed some Rime procs due to a very basic interface (staring at your buff bar sucks). The encounter has a temporary damage modification buff so don't take the numbers too seriously.

Rotation used: IT-PS-BS-BS-OB-Dump
OB-OB-OB-Dump

Weapons used:
MH (with FC):[Serilas, Blood Blade of Invar One-Arm]
OH (with RI):[Razorscale Talon]

The rest of my gear is identical to my current armory profile.

Recount shot #1
Recount shot #2

Unfortunately I haven't got the option for further raid tests as no more bosses are currently available, not even the Patchwerk dummies. Nonetheless the spec looks solid and is fun to play. I'll try to keep you updated as the PTR progresses.

I'm Currently using this spec on the ptr with a bit of a tweak 11/53/7 with

[Vulmir, the Northern Tempest] in MH with Fallen Crusader
and
[Razorscale Talon] in OH with razorice

using the rotation given i was around 4600dps in 5 man. I'm thinking this is decent for a end game raiding spec.

phantazum · 07/12/09, 7:34 PM

Originally Posted by Qaenyin

I've been running some ideas of my own and unfortunately due to blizzard not having any DW weapons available for premades on the PTR, and the fact my main has no onehanded weapons available at present, I can't test this on the PTR, and I can't code thus the simulator is something I can't make heads nor tails of, so I was curious what you all had for input on this:

I've been throwing around a couple variations of ToT+MoG Frost/Unholy DW spec, Slow/Slow. I've been debating which of the two would be more effective and if they would size up against the more standard deep frost and deep unholy builds you all have been testing.

The builds in question are

DW DC/UB using FC/FC

vs

DW Frost Strike using FC/RI

I'm assuming the Death Coil/UB would be the better of the two unless I'm missing something dramatic.

Rotation would be PS IT BS BS OB Dump, OB OB OB Dump.

Blood presence of course.

If anyone who has some free time could throw these in a sim or even just tell me flat out if I'm missing something obvious it'd be much appreciated, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a simple "spec ideas/theorizing/untested stuff" general DW thread for 3.2 where this would probably be more appropriate, else I would post there instead.

I considered subbing Subversion instead of taking Guile of Gorefiend, but ultimated figured that due to Subversion being a flat crit bonus the better scaling from crit that GoG provides would prove more beneficial.

I tried both builds out on a test dummy. Sigil of Awarness, Vulmir and Ironforge Smasher as my weapons. I used both FC/FC and FC/RI.

The death coil one was fun but was about a 600 dps loss thanks to Unholy Blight not working correctly, i would like to see what a Sim gets this with build.

The frost strike one was awesome, It was a 200 dps gain over the average blood minor build and 400 over any other unholy minors. The other thing i like about this build is the dps is more consistent and less RNG than full frost. The rotation was cleaner and tighter than a build that uses howling blast. It also uses the glyphs to their fullest. I saw very little difference between FL/FL and FL/RI, FL/FL came out slightly ahead by no more than 50 dps. I tried Sigil of VH and it was a 200-300 dps loss. There are almost no points wasted in this build. The only ones i see are Impurity i may move those to morbidity to help its AOE a little.

My hats off to you, this is the build was great. Its a lot better than the DW ghoul build i came up with at the start of the ptr.

Maraxus · 07/13/09, 6:26 AM

Originally Posted by phantazum

I tried both builds out on a test dummy. Sigil of Awarness, Vulmir and Ironforge Smasher as my weapons. I used both FC/FC and FC/RI.

The death coil one was fun but was about a 600 dps loss thanks to Unholy Blight not working correctly, i would like to see what a Sim gets this with build.

The frost strike one was awesome, It was a 200 dps gain over the average blood minor build and 400 over any other unholy minors. The other thing i like about this build is the dps is more consistent and less RNG than full frost. The rotation was cleaner and tighter than a build that uses howling blast. It also uses the glyphs to their fullest. I saw very little difference between FL/FL and FL/RI, FL/FL came out slightly ahead by no more than 50 dps. I tried Sigil of VH and it was a 200-300 dps loss. There are almost no points wasted in this build. The only ones i see are Impurity i may move those to morbidity to help its AOE a little.

My hats off to you, this is the build was great. Its a lot better than the DW ghoul build i came up with at the start of the ptr.

That build was commented at the start of this thread.

Its trading TS and HB for dirge (notice you can have chill of the grave plus dirge in this build = huge RP generation) and perma-ghoul.

You dont need much calculations to notice the DPS increase from the perma-ghoul and its improved scaling.
Anyways.. you have to take care since this DPS increase comes at great costs. You almost totally lose your AoE capability and your single target DPS is very pet-dependant. Thats not a good thing on fights with lots of adds or on eavy AoE fights (99% of them).

It could end up being the best DPS build on the sims and the worst one on actuall boss fights.

Yubble · 07/13/09, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by Maraxus

That build was commented at the start of this thread.

Its trading TS and HB for dirge (notice you can have chill of the grave plus dirge in this build = huge RP generation) and perma-ghoul.

You dont need much calculations to notice the DPS increase from the perma-ghoul and its improved scaling.
Anyways.. you have to take care since this DPS increase comes at great costs. You almost totally lose your AoE capability and your single target DPS is very pet-dependant. Thats not a good thing on fights with lots of adds or on eavy AoE fights (99% of them).

It could end up being the best DPS build on the sims and the worst one on actuall boss fights.

Maybe.

I switched, agonizingly, from Frost to Unholy when Frost got the nerf bat a couple months back. After a lot of practice and raiding, micro-managing the perma-ghoul is not hard anymore. Just takes some getting used to. I have no problem being #1 in my guild runs on almost every boss (although i have a suspician that many of our dps have no clue how to play their classes...), and yea a lot of the credit goes to the pet.

So... although single target dps may be very pet-dependent... I think that's absolutely fine, if you're pet savvy. I'd rather take a build like THIS for Chill of the Grave, as more often than not there will be another frost dk or enhance shaman providing the haste buff.

Anyway, for single target, it definitely seems like perma-ghoul is the way to go. AOE offspec ftw, right?