DW Builds 3.2 -Revenge of the Offhand - Page 50

everwatch · 08/01/09, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by Sylari

I'm personally hesitant about disesae, simply because we're arguably the bast applicator for the 20% haste buff... I saw some interesting numbers with GoHB , and some math for it earlier, is that just considered a nonoption at this point? ( will post up the numbers I have when the power comes back )

I'm not sure how you can say that as Enhancement Shaman are still prevalent in raids easily giving people 20% haste through WF totem with little to no effort. Especially with the one button drop of totems in 3.2 release.

Ebonplague · 08/02/09, 4:52 AM

Originally Posted by PristineChaos

I see a lot of people promoting Blood Strike as the 3rd glyph. What are you counting on to provide the debuff consistently? No mage specs FFB anymore other than on Hodir sometimes and ferals don't spec infected wounds.

The question is, if this still is a good choice even if the snare is constantly on the boss. Bloodstrike on the PTR has been reverted to its 3.1.2 live state where you only get 12,5% bonus damage per disease up. Since you usually use one Blood Rune for pest and only one per two rotations for the bloodstrike, I really don't see any reason to take this Glyph. Even if you don't like Glyph of Disease you'd still be better off with Glyph of HB or IT in my opinion.

mojo0070 · 08/02/09, 5:55 AM

From the test I've ran, I've consistently had the best results with 10/53/8 build.

I took a point into ravenous dead versus unbreakable armor simply because I found
that casting UA really screws up the rotation, and DW spec is very demanding in that
to maximize it, there's not a lot of room for error. I took RD over a point into Dark
Conviction simply because in my tests I got more benefit from 1% str, than from 1%
crit, not to mention that it scales better as well.

Rotation I used was: PS IT OB BS BS FSx2 OBx2 FS OB FS (dump) and HB as Rime procced.

Now i like the sound of the glyph of disease rotation but can anyone explain to me why im getting better results with this spec?

I also like this spec because i hate seeing my attack power drop so low after i respec from blood, its drops like 500 attack power in favour of BCB and necrosis

Oh 1 more thing the rotation on the front page says after diseases set up it would go :

OB -> OB -> BS -> Pest -> Dump
OB -> OB -> (Dump) -> OB -> Dump

Is all it means when it says diseases set up that u do IT, PS and then start the above rotation? Just making sure i tested that rotation correctly on PTR's.

sweberry · 08/02/09, 6:19 AM

Originally Posted by Foxx2405

NOTE: The numbers seem lower now because DWsetstat2 now uses 180 dps weapons where it used 200 dps before !!! (That is also why doc's numbers are higher, he uses 188 dps weapons; weapon dps makes a HUGE difference)

I guess this + the use of BS-glyph explains why a spec that has been tested before suddenly showed up with ~500 more dps?

About the BS glyph: It seems we have to get kinda lucky to have the debuff up for us which we shouldn't rely on. What glyphs are possible replacements? IT, PS, (HB?), ghoul? Should make some calculations for them.

Also, might it be possible to start listing what dps the different specs (with rotation/priority listed) gets with the second statset? Live might just be coming soon enough as Fargom mentioned.

Astalion · 08/02/09, 7:43 AM

Originally Posted by Ebonplague

Since you usually use one Blood Rune for pest and only one per two rotations for the bloodstrike, I really don't see any reason to take this Glyph. Even if you don't like Glyph of Disease you'd still be better off with Glyph of HB or IT in my opinion.

You'd only use a blood rune for pest if you have the glyph of disease - other rotations use both blood runes for blood strikes. You also only use one IT during those 20 seconds, and all simulations I've seen show the BS glyph ahead of IT.

For when you can't rely on something to proc the BS Glyph, I'm finding that PS Glyph actually seems superior to IT (of course, as doc said, IT glyph will help you far more during parts of fights where you can't be in melee range). Would be interesting to see if we can get the sim to use the HB glyph in some intelligent way, such as the one where blood runes alternated between PS/BS and IT/BS, switching in HB on Rime procs (iirc the math done back then didn't account for additional Rime procs possibly clipping the diseases - that is if we actually want to use Rime procs in any other places)

@mojo0070: If you're already in melee range, you'd have to set up your diseases using something like IT-PS-IT-BT-OB-Pest (I think that should result in the smoothest transition to the actual rotation, while giving TS bonus to FF and making sure your diseases are up for the next Pest). From range you could probably do IT while running in, then IT-PS-OB-BS-Pest.
The simulator currently isn't really capable of handling this kind of rotation though afaik.

Foxx2405 · 08/02/09, 7:44 AM

People are just shouting out glyphs now without any reasonable consideration behind it.

First of all glyph of Howling Blast, this came up on the WoW-europe forums too (where i try to relay some info we get here), but just think about it for a short while.

What would we possibly gain from glyph of howling blast ?

You can't alter your rotation because you still need that PS. So you're still left with a single frost rune you can not use on anything but......... exactly Icy Touch.

You can alterate your rotation but:

HB > OB > PS > BS
OB > OB > BS > XX

Is the best i can come up with. That means you lose 1 obliterate, unless you get rime procs in which case you still have 4 obliterates.
However you still have a free deathrune (XX) left which you can only use on ? Guess what: ICY TOUCH.

There is as far as i see simply NO GAIN to get from glyph of howling blast, unless you drop epidemic and go with a rotation like this:

HB > Ob > PS > BS
HB > Ob > BS > PS

You give up 2 obliterates (!!!) to be able to make glyph of howling blast work, and better yet you can now spec into the blood tree which is already worse than the unholy tree even without trying.

------

@mojo:
Did you use a simulator for that or dps on a dummy.

Blood subspec has already been (semi-) confirmed to be a worse option than the unholy tree.

Unless of course you start hitting a dummy without raid buffs, because the crit from blood is quite a lot better without raid buffs (if you have 30% crit unbuffed and 40% crit buffed that 14% crit from blood is gonna be a bigger increase on the unbuffed part).

Also since the mob is not debuffed you miss out on a lot of the good unholy talents that thrive on that. Blood talents hardly scale really. Whereas necrosis and BCB scale insanely well with buffs / debuffs and better gear.

------

@astalion:
I'm not 100% sure, but if you would have an extra rime proc wouldn't you be able to move an extra FS to the next part of the rotation.

So instead of:
PS > IT > OB > BS > BS > FS > FS
Ob > Ob > Ob > FS > FS

You'd get:
PS > IT > OB > BS > BS > HB > FS
Ob > Ob > Ob > FS > FS > FS

for example. One of the things i noticed with this build is that you actually rarely go over the 80 RP, so you have quite a large buffer with RPM.
I agree things would be easier with Glyph of disease though.

Also on this same note, would it be more ideal to use a 4/4 rotation instead of a 5/3 rotation. As to better spread the Rime procs and GCDs:

OB > OB > PS > IT
OB > OB > BS > BS

And then you can use this sequence as a starter:

IT > PS > OB > BS > BS
and then do OB > OB > PS > IT next instead of 3x OB, and you should be able to fall into the aforementioned rotation.

I'm gonna totally think out of the box here.

I was thinking:

Ideally we would want to have 4 major glyph slots, because besides, what we consider the 2 mandatory glyphs FS and Ob we could take 2 others.

My thought process was to combine the benefit of the glyph of disease with the frost fever application (and thus IT refreshement) of glyph of howling blast.

So i was thinking. How about we drop glyph of Frost Strike. And take Glyph of Obliterate, Glyph of Diseases and Glyph of Howling Blast.

Glyph of frost strike is a pretty huge loss. It means that you lose 20% of the dps on your frost strike. However if you use Glyph of diseases to keep diseases up, and glyph of howling blast on rime procs (i'm somewhat assuming you get at least 1 rime proc per 20 sec rotation here), you would be able to pull an extra obliterate like this:

OB > OB > PT > BS
OB > OB > OB

You are keeping disease up certainly with PT, and you keep refreshing IIT whenever a rime proc occurs.

This is of course just way out of the box thinking, and probably wont help that much. But you'd trade IT + PS + 1/5 FS for 1 Ob (i think).

The only big problem is that you can not garuantee a 100% uptime of IIT with this. (It has about a 80% chance to proc every 20 seconds this way)

EDIT: Did some simming. It shows up as a reasonable dps loss compared to OB/FS/BS though, and I'm not 100% sure how well this can be simulated really.

Ebonplague · 08/02/09, 8:09 AM

Originally Posted by Foxx2405

So i was thinking. How about we drop glyph of Frost Strike. And take Glyph of Obliterate, Glyph of Diseases and Glyph of Howling Blast.

I see a problem right there. If I understand correctly, the way Glyph of Disease refreshes your diseases works like this: you put your IT up once you've got, let's say, FC and Greatness proc. Now your IT and PS gain the increased AP bonus and tick harder. When you refresh your diseases with Pest, you will retain this bonus. That would suggest, each time you use a Rime proc on glyphed HB, you would lose those benefits and trade them for your current procs which means sometimes you won't get any benefit and therefore lose DPS.

Astalion · 08/02/09, 8:18 AM

Your take on the HB glyph is all wrong ;P The idea was a rotation along the lines of
OB-OB-XX-YY
OB-OB-BS-BS
XX would be rotated between BS and IT, or replaced with Rime whenever it procced, YY would be rotated between BS and PS. I think I managed to make the simulator do this (or well, I made it only use HB to refresh FF if Rime is up), and it's simulating above Glyph of BS (I still have some adjustments to try that might make it sim even higher)

And yeah, you would usually be able to move an FS to the next part of the rotation (I think I already stated this as part of my Glyph of Disease post, except I phrased it a bit differently), but if you put every Rime proc to use you should in theory risk capping your RP at some point (my theory was based around 6 GCDs/rune refresh however, if you use 13 GCDs/2 rune refreshes your results would probably be different).

@HB+Pest Glyphs: It seems sort of redundant to have 2 glyphs for refreshing diseases - keep in mind simulations would probably show a dps decrease from the HB glyph due to disease clipping, and the only real reason you're using it would be the raid buff the simulator already assumes you have. Also, the simulator would probably be even less likely to use Pestilence in a good spot with HB screwing up the timers, unless you used a rotation, which means it won't use Rime procs properly (afaik).

@Ebonplague: That's how it'd work in game, yes, but the simulator updates the damage for every tick of the disease according to what buffs you have at the time.

Foxx2405 · 08/02/09, 8:36 AM

Originally Posted by Astalion

Your take on the HB glyph is all wrong ;P The idea was a rotation along the lines of
OB-OB-XX-YY
OB-OB-BS-BS
XX would be rotated between BS and IT, or replaced with Rime whenever it procced, YY would be rotated between BS and PS. I think I managed to make the simulator do this (or well, I made it only use HB to refresh FF if Rime is up), and it's simulating above Glyph of BS (I still have some adjustments to try that might make it sim even higher)

And yeah, you would usually be able to move an FS to the next part of the rotation (I think I already stated this as part of my Glyph of Disease post, except I phrased it a bit differently), but if you put every Rime proc to use you should in theory risk capping your RP at some point (my theory was based around 6 GCDs/rune refresh however, if you use 13 GCDs/2 rune refreshes your results would probably be different).

@HB+Pest Glyphs: It seems sort of redundant to have 2 glyphs for refreshing diseases - keep in mind simulations would probably show a dps decrease from the HB glyph due to disease clipping, and the only real reason you're using it would be the raid buff the simulator already assumes you have. Also, the simulator would probably be even less likely to use Pestilence in a good spot with HB screwing up the timers, unless you used a rotation, which means it won't use Rime procs properly (afaik).

@Ebonplague: That's how it'd work in game, yes, but the simulator updates the damage for every tick of the disease according to what buffs you have at the time.

Ah right that was the point

But that would indeed only benefit you if you can not already get RP dumped within the GCD available.
If it does look that way this might be interresting. I always hate leaving unused runes up but, i guess you'd have to think in GCD rotations rather than rune rotations.

So that would be:
OB>OB>IT>PS
If rime doesnt proc and diseases need to be refreshed.

OB>OB>BS>BS
if rime doesnt proc but diseases still have more than 10s left

OB>OB>IT>BS
No rime - FF < 10 sec / BP > 10 sec

OB>OB>BS>PS
No rime - FF > 10 sec / BP < 10 sec

OB>OB>HB>BS
Rime - PS > 10 sec

OB>OB>HB>PS
Rime - PS < 10 sec

If i get it right thats the basic idea.
That might actually work pretty well

Its hard to model into the simulator though, but i guess you'd use something like this:

FF > BP > OB > Rime > BS > FS

The 2 problems i face with the simulator though are:
1. I'm afraid it tries to use up all runes instead of burning FSs when there is a single death rune left (as per your idea), however if i move FS up in the chain (above BS for example) then it will start dumping RP too soon in the rotation.

2. The current system does not really allow you to set up a starter rotation. I'm thinking that with that rotation it refuses to use the death runes for the diseases.

And i know the HB + PT glyph are somewhat redundant, but we're getting in a situation where we're trying to chose the best of the worst. So i thought i'd just turn right where everyone turns left

Astalion · 08/02/09, 8:47 AM

Yeah, other than your typo that seems correct as to the general idea

I'm pretty sure the simulator will just leave a single death rune on it's own - Blood Strike in the priority will not use Death Runes that it made itself (or rather, blood runes that were somehow turned into death runes, pestilence included) for example.
Your second point is very valid though, but other than a few wasted Rime procs it shouldn't make a huge difference in what order abilities are used (but it becomes much neater/easier to keep track of for a player), as any gaps can generally be filled with FSs or something. I think the simulator probably produces roughly this rotation with what I'm doing:
IT(or Rime)-PS-OB-BS-BS
OB-OB-OB
(a priority of FF>BP>OB>BS>KMRime>FS>Rime)
Edit: Meh, increased the simulation time, it actually seems like HB glyph is slightly (~15 dps) behind BS glyph, should still be ahead of IT/PS/Ghoul glyphs at least.

Vaedron · 08/02/09, 2:54 PM

Hi everyone, long time reader, first time poster, you know how it goes.

I just wanted to point out that when using Glyph of Howling Blast, Unbreakable Armor will fit nicely into a rotation by eating the spare frost rune that is leftover on the current cycle, simplifying the next rune cycle's rotation and allowing Blood Tap to be used for something better like an extra Obliterate when spliced between bB runes instead of being used just to activate UA.

dr_AllCOM3 · 08/02/09, 4:45 PM

The BiS gear is something along the lines of

Warhelm of the Champion
Frigid Strength of Hodir
Conqueror's Darkruned Shoulderplates
Drape of the Faceless General
Embrace of the Gladiator
Armbands of Bedlam
Gauntlets of Ruthless Reprisal
Belt of Colossal Rage
Plated Leggings of Ruination
Melancholy Sabatons
Bladebearer's Signet
Sif's Promise
Comet's Trail
Darkmoon Card: Greatness
Caress of Insanity
Vulmir, the Northern Tempest

and

Warhelm of the Champion
Frigid Strength of Hodir
Shoulderplates of the Celestial Watch
Drape of the Faceless General
Embrace of the Gladiator
Gauntlets of Ruthless Reprisal
Belt of Colossal Rage
Plated Leggings of Ruination
Sabatons of Lifeless Night
Sif's Promise
Seal of the Betrayed King
Darkmoon Card: Greatness
Comet's Trail
Caress of Insanity
Caress of Insanity

depending on which items you want to include. Gem for Exp cap and Str. I've generated EP values with the sim and used them in the DK_Optimize spreadsheet.
Don't try too hard to get items now, because the 3.2 items are all better. I've included them in the optimizer and just Hodir's neck survived

.

Astalion · 08/02/09, 4:50 PM

Um, my tests showed the t8 bonuses as strong enough to use over offset pieces, did you calculate the benefit from those?

pigvomit · 08/02/09, 5:08 PM

Has anyone done the hard math on stat weights for deep frost DW? 0/53/18

Also,

Originally Posted by dr_AllCOM3

The BiS gear is something along the lines of

Warhelm of the Champion
Frigid Strength of Hodir
Conqueror's Darkruned Shoulderplates
Drape of the Faceless General
Embrace of the Gladiator
Armbands of Bedlam
Gauntlets of Ruthless Reprisal
Belt of Colossal Rage
Plated Leggings of Ruination
Melancholy Sabatons
Bladebearer's Signet
Sif's Promise
Comet's Trail
Darkmoon Card: Greatness
Caress of Insanity
Vulmir, the Northern Tempest

and

Warhelm of the Champion
Frigid Strength of Hodir
Shoulderplates of the Celestial Watch
Drape of the Faceless General
Embrace of the Gladiator
Gauntlets of Ruthless Reprisal
Belt of Colossal Rage
Plated Leggings of Ruination
Sabatons of Lifeless Night
Sif's Promise
Seal of the Betrayed King
Darkmoon Card: Greatness
Comet's Trail
Caress of Insanity
Caress of Insanity

depending on which items you want to include. Gem for Exp cap and Str. I've generated EP values with the sim and used them in the DK_Optimize spreadsheet.
Don't try too hard to get items now, because the 3.2 items are all better. I've included them in the optimizer and just Hodir's neck survived

.

Is that supposed to be for Unholy DW because I would think that Deep Frost would at reach for the 2 pc. T8.5 bonus for frost strike.

dr_AllCOM3 · 08/02/09, 5:30 PM

Originally Posted by Astalion

Um, my tests showed the t8 bonuses as strong enough to use over offset pieces, did you calculate the benefit from those?

Of course I did. I'm not sure, if the sim handles the set bonuses correctly. It maybe undervalues them. Unfortunately it takes so long, that I don't want to test it.

Originally Posted by pigvomit

Is that supposed to be for Unholy DW because I would think that Deep Frost would at reach for the 2 pc. T8.5 bonus for frost strike.

Unholy DW is dead and please stop quoting long posts. You could have easily shortened it like I did with yours.