Of course it would. Quite a bit of your damage does not show up when doing test on dummies which is why it's typically a horrible idea to run any testing on dummies. All of this damage would scale with Virulence Sigil where Awareness is always counted. Not to mention Virulence will scale with raid buffs as well.
I completly agree. There seems to be a brewing debate about the Sigil of Virulence so it's worth getting this sorted in a simulation for both Frost and Unholy.
Given a roughly 90% uptime the EP should be fairly easy to calculate for Frost. 90% would be = 180 Strength. Using Vank's numbers from a few pages ago, this would be 469.8 EP. Do we currently have numbers for Awareness and Vengeful Heart?
We know that SoA adds 336 damage to Oblit, which is equivalent to 14/2.4*336 ~= 2000 AP. On any given fight, Oblit contributes roughly 20-25% of my total damage (though lower on AoE fights), so this reduces down to 0.2*2000 = 400 EP.
If by "other DPS talents" you mean "utility talents of dubious value such as Endless Winter, Lichborne, Chilblains, or Imp. Frost Presence", then yes, that is what it lets you do.
If you don't have Windfury, you need IIT in your spec. It's not rocket surgery. If you're not using the Glyph of Disease, Howling Blast or Icy Touch are still probably better glyphs for that slot than Blood Strike.
Testing both GoIT and GoBS last night (in Ulduar and ToC) I've realized for me that GoIT is near worthless, as I didn't find a single situation where I had an RP shortage.
I was really impressed by GoBS though (FFB mage in raid).
I'm pretty sure GoBS was shown to be the best 3rd glyph as long as the snare was present many pages back.
So even though virulence is great, 200str 100% uptime, awareness is still retardedly better.
Going to turn the sigil back to the vendor and buy it back later if it turns out better than other alternatives
So even though virulence is great, 200str 100% uptime, awareness is still retardedly better.
Going to turn the sigil back to the vendor and buy it back later if it turns out better than other alternatives
We know that SoA adds 336 damage to Oblit, which is equivalent to 14/2.4*336 ~= 2000 AP. On any given fight, Oblit contributes roughly 20-25% of my total damage (though lower on AoE fights), so this reduces down to 0.2*2000 = 400 EP.
SoV wins by these rudimentary calculations.
Accounting for the Off Hand would mean that the extra damage ignored a 50% cut to half of it so it is at 100% rather than the 75% it would be if it were AP/weapon damage. That means you should multiply your result of 400 by 4/3 giving about 533 AP.
As has been repeated a few times in this thread testing Virulence against Awareness on test dummies is quite dumb. You should probably re-read the last few pages and delete your post.
If anything I did not expect someone to post a _dummy_test saying "this is the way it is" after 1. it's been said a million times we don't use dummies for this and alot of other stuff, 2. it's been/being discussed just a few posts behind. It shouldn't be THAT hard to read back a bit.
Accounting for the Off Hand would mean that the extra damage ignored a 50% cut to half of it so it is at 100% rather than the 75% it would be if it were AP/weapon damage. That means you should multiply your result of 400 by 4/3 giving about 533 AP.
Hmmm, good point. I remember hearing reports about the offhand actually receiving 115% of the bonus damage from SoA (from NoCS), in addition to not being affected by the normal offhand penalty, is there any truth to this? If that's the case, it'll likely push SoA well above SoV for single target fights, as you've shown. For add fights like Freya, though, where Oblit dwindles to 12-15% of my total damage output, SoA will easily be king.
Actually, now that I think about it, on very select fights Sigil swapping is likely to be a viable strategy. On Freya, for example, you could swap sigils at the beginning of each wave depending on what spawned. Thorim P1 and Mimiron P4 are both examples where SoV would likely be better than SoA, while in Thorim P2 and Mimiron P1,2,3 SoA will dominate. Given the substantial downtime during each of the phase transitions for these fights, the GCD associated with swapping sigils would be inconsequential, eliminating the only downside to carrying both of them with you.
Hmmm, good point. I remember hearing reports about the offhand actually receiving 115% of the bonus damage from SoA (from NoCS), in addition to not being affected by the normal offhand penalty, is there any truth to this? If that's the case, it'll likely push SoA well above SoV for single target fights, as you've shown. For add fights like Freya, though, where Oblit dwindles to 12-15% of my total damage output, SoA will easily be king.
Actually, now that I think about it, on very select fights Sigil swapping is likely to be a viable strategy. On Freya, for example, you could swap sigils at the beginning of each wave depending on what spawned. Thorim P1 and Mimiron P4 are both examples where SoV would likely be better than SoA, while in Thorim P2 and Mimiron P1,2,3 SoA will dominate. Given the substantial downtime during each of the phase transitions for these fights, the GCD associated with swapping sigils would be inconsequential, eliminating the only downside to carrying both of them with you.
The 115% does effect the numbers but only slightly, since it applies to both cases. It puts the difference from your number being 75% of the actual to 73.3%. Not really enough of a difference when using simple numbers.
Algalon parse from last night. It should put me within top 4 or 5 for DKs on wmo but for some reason the dps ranking is being really wonky for me today.
Key thing to take note of is my average disease ticks and how close they are to the maximum ticks. I reapplied diseases with procs up and kept them up with Pest (this is with GoDisease of course). I did have them drop a few times when running to black holes, but I was trying to make it a point to get a pest off right before running to a black hole.
I have no way to get the sim to do this so how this compares to a different 3rd glyph I am not sure.
Only strange thing is Blood Plague still did slightly more than Frost Fever, although I made it a point to reapply FF with an FF already up on the target.
Hopefully I won't get banned since I've already posted this I think twice, though without capital letters.
WHEN COMPARING SIGIL OF AWARENESS VS SIGIL OF VIRULENCE, TEST DUMMIES DO NOT ACCURATELY REFLECT DAMAGE.
Test dummies are not debuffed, therefore they do not reflect additional damage done by dots (which will only go up once 4 pc is reached), BCB, White damage, etc you receive from raids. Sunders/misery/Ebon Plaguebringer/and so on all amplify non Obliterate damage. Use your brains, Jesus.
Algalon parse from last night. It should put me within top 4 or 5 for DKs on wmo but for some reason the dps ranking is being really wonky for me today.
Key thing to take note of is my average disease ticks and how close they are to the maximum ticks. I reapplied diseases with procs up and kept them up with Pest (this is with GoDisease of course). I did have them drop a few times when running to black holes, but I was trying to make it a point to get a pest off right before running to a black hole.
I have no way to get the sim to do this so how this compares to a different 3rd glyph I am not sure.
Only strange thing is Blood Plague still did slightly more than Frost Fever, although I made it a point to reapply FF with an FF already up on the target.
That is odd. Looking at the parse again, FF was mitigated slightly more than BP. Maybe Razorice's debuff does not work with FF in this case because FF goes up before the vulnerability, and the refreshing via GoDis doesn't allow it to pick up the buff?
In repeated DKSim runs with a 3/51/17 DW frost spec the sigil of virulence beat awareness by a mere 30-50DPS. This is in sharp contrast to 2H unholy builds, where it beat the sigil of the vengeful heart by 150-180DPS. I don't mean to imply that my results are representative; everybody should run the sim themselves. They do seem to be rather close.
Are we simming the Sigils with T8 4set in mind? Since the 4set increases Obliterate damage it increases the dps from SoA as well. On the other hand, SoA does nothing for t9 4set. I guess we should be moving on to SoV sooner or later, but maybe not while we still have t8 4set.
I wanted to get a feel for how the blood spec was vs GoD. I'll try GoD again for next week. I ran the rotation with 1 disease, refreshing with Rime when possible. I have some plague strikes in there for the start and big bangs. I was pretty sloppy with my priority, FF dropped a few times.
Sigil: SoA at the time
Presence: Blood
Enchant: FC/RI
Edit: An interesting note, my main hand obliterate has 13.1% higher crit chance than my off hand. However, my blood strike crit rates are very similar for both hands (50%). The crit modifying talents I have are subversion, dark conviction, rime, and annihilation. The lead culprit is likely rime. That or subversion/dark conviction apply to the blood strike off hand, but not obliterate. Though, this is a very small sample set and could be completely RNG.
This is something worth testing. I'll take my spec to a dummy with consistent buffs and see if I can get some more data (this scenario should be pretty valid with dummy testing). Anyone else is welcome to test as well.
Update: After looking over the rest of my log, the obliterate main hand / off hand have a very similar crit rate. The previously mentioned scenario is probably due to RNG. I will still test on a dummy for a good 500 swings to ensure the same results, but it looks like rime, subversion, and dark conviction all apply to both hits of ToT on obliterate as expected.
Couple things to think about in terms of 3rd Glyph, Unbreakable Armor, and Blood Tap:
I noticed that its really hard to work UA into the rotation without losing OBs, but if you have Howling Blast Glyph you can re-apply FF with HB on a Rime proc, use the frost rune for UA and use the unholy rune to re-apply Blood Plague - if you time this correctly when BP is about to fall off it works seamlessly.
As for Blood Tap, when I have two regular Blood runes I use one for BS, then BT for 2 Death Runes, use them on OB then use a Blood Tap cancelaura macro and my runes refresh as regular Blood.
The only downside of this is that you clip diseases a tiny bit depending on where you re-apply BP and of course when you HB on rime procs it refreshes FF. In return you get aoe disease application and a very, very smooth rotation. I just ran a 10 minute test on the dummy and I was able to use UA and BT almost always on CD without interrupting the rotation at all.
Malice has higher ilvl, more weapon damage and higher dps.
BUT
Aledar's is slower (2.60 vs 2.50) and has a socket (which basically means 20 more STR).
Basically the question is: would slower weapon speed and gem socket be more beneficial than a little higher weapon damage and dps? I'm thinking about farming for that mace, just can't crack this..
I don't understand why people are finding it difficult to use Unbreakable Armor. In my experience, there have been two easy ways of using it, they simply require you to pay attention to your rune timers.
1) Use it when you have 2x Death Runes and no Frost Runes. Hit UA and then immedietly hit BT and your rotation continues as normal.
2) Use it when you have 2x Blood runes recharging. Depending on the conditions of your other runes, you'll either need to hit BT before (if you have no Frost Runes) or after (vice versa) you use UA.
Both of these situations will require you to use a very simple /cancelaura Blood Tap macro after you have used the BT Death Rune in order to prevent your rotation from being destabilized.
Basically on the 2nd part of the rotation where you OB>OB>OB all your runes are on CD BT>UA cancel aura. This doesn't make any changes to your current rotation whatsoever. You could say it delays one blood rune by 1.5 s but that doesn't matter since you need to cast 2 BS next rotation anyways where there will be a 1.5 s delay anyways
I don't understand why people are finding it difficult to use Unbreakable Armor. In my experience, there have been two easy ways of using it, they simply require you to pay attention to your rune timers.
1) Use it when you have 2x Death Runes and no Frost Runes. Hit UA and then immedietly hit BT and your rotation continues as normal.
2) Use it when you have 2x Blood runes recharging. Depending on the conditions of your other runes, you'll either need to hit BT before (if you have no Frost Runes) or after (vice versa) you use UA.
Both of these situations will require you to use a very simple /cancelaura Blood Tap macro after you have used the BT Death Rune in order to prevent your rotation from being destabilized.
My problem mostly comes forth out of not knowing my rotation by hearth yet. However there are some more issues.
Also, if you can only use it when you have deathrunes, or when blood runes are recharging that still means you have a window of about 10 out of every 20 seconds where you can not freely use it.
Doesn't always matter but it happens that my trinkets have a few seconds left when BL is popped for example and i want that UA up so i can pop my ghoul.
Today we had CC, the first bosses (beasts) are generally a pain. Only the first one of them is melee friendly. The second boss is better, although i got flaming feet twice in a row. Other than that i've been mostly tanking.
I think once i have some more time on my hands i'm gonna get the rhythm of this DW spec down (i notice that too often my rotation gets a bit off and then i lose too much dps trying to correct it). After i got that down i'm gonna play around with UA again.
I don't really think UA is hard to manage, but more somewhat limited in its use. But that could just be my unholy 2H attitude where i could pop gargoyle whenever I wanted to pop it. Regardless of rotation (i just need 50 RP but that was a trivial something).
EDIT:
Basically on the 2nd part of the rotation where you OB>OB>OB all your runes are on CD BT>UA cancel aura. This doesn't make any changes to your current rotation whatsoever. You could say it delays one blood rune by 1.5 s but that doesn't matter since you need to cast 2 BS next rotation anyways where there will be a 1.5 s delay anyways
Ah that should be doable. I think i just need to learn to not see UA as a cooldown i can freely pop.
And i need to play around with it on a dummy.
The thing with the cancelmacro is though that sometimes you DO need it, other times you don't.
In your situation you want to cancel it because you need BS next rotation.
But in the situation like this:
IT>PS>OB>BS>BS
OB>OB>UA>OB
You don't want to cancelaura in that case. I fixed that by putting the cancelmacro on BS, but there was still a situation where that messed up and i got 1 Blood rune and 1 Deathrune, where i wouldve had 2x deathrune otherwise.
Malice has higher ilvl, more weapon damage and higher dps.
BUT
Aledar's is slower (2.60 vs 2.50) and has a socket (which basically means 20 more STR).
Basically the question is: would slower weapon speed and gem socket be more beneficial than a little higher weapon damage and dps? I'm thinking about farming for that mace, just can't crack this..
Aledar's Battlestar has been hot fixed to have correct stats according to it's ilvl.
Malice still has higher high-end damage, so that is probably a better pick unless you need the hit from Aledar's.
According to Foxx's interpretation of Vank's EP calculations (pg 48), [Malice] needs 5.21 more weapon DPS than [Aledar's Battlestar], which it does (15.7), so [Malice] should be better.
Last edited by Laurelai : 08/12/09 at 7:17 PM.
Reason: Corrected dps difference from prior post of hotfix.
08/12/09, 1:25 PM
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