Just pointing out in a raid setting Merciless Combat is less advantageous than... "advertised" because of the abundance of end-fight + damage mechanics. Many classes have either execute talents or execute clones that will reduce MCs raid effectiveness.
Simply put, if 65% of the boss' health = 6.5 minutes, and 35% of his health is 2 minutes (due to execute esque effects), you're effectively valuing MC as 3.5/2 or 1.75 times its value. Of course I just threw those numbers out there, but you get the idea.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. The static increase of raid dps within execute range would decrease the actual amount of time spent in execute range so that the time spent was actually less than 35% of the time.

I'm not sure if the simulator takes that into account, but even if it doesn't it would assume the best circumstances for personal dps sub-35% if it used my method, so if BCB outshines it then, it would perform better in a raid setting in actuality.

I see, I recalculated 1 point of subversion from my first on log over all attempts for simplicity.

Given:
375.% damage from obliterate
465 landed obliterates (MH+ OH)
avg MH hit: 3,448
avg MH crit: 8,967
avg OH hit: 2,305
avg OH crit: 6,040
total obliterate dmg dealt (2/3 subversion): 5,173,322
crit chance for obliterate (2/3 subversion): 57.31%
crit chance with 3/3: 60.31%

In my calculation I added MH and OH hits and crits together respectively, so avg hit was 5753 and crit 15,007.

avg hit/crit * 2/3 subversion crit factor
5753 * (1 - .5731) = 2,456
15007 * .5731 = 8,601

avg dmg per cast of Oblit(2/3 subversion): 11,048.8

avg hit/crit * 3/3 subversion crit factor
5753 * (1 - .6031) = 2,283
15007 * .6031 = 9,051

avg dmg per cast of Oblit(3/3 subversion): 11,334.1

multiplied each by the number of casts of obliterate:
2/3 subversion: 11,048.8 * 465 = 5,137,692.0
3/3 subversion: 11,334.1 * 465 = 5,270,356.5

difference: 132,664.5

from my log my obliterate dealt 5,173,322 damage

132,664.5/5,173,322 * 100 =2.56% dmg increase for obliterate

2.56% * 37.5% = .96% dps increase for 1 putting a final point into subversion.

OKAY so using your method on my numbers I got something that looks a lot like what you calculated. I see how this works now and its a lot more complicated than I thought. So for me putting the extra point in subversion wouldn't really increase my dps much at all, I would however gain additional threat reduction.

The next thing I'd like to look into is if dropping 1 point in BCB for Unbreakable Armor would be worth it, especially with GoD and disease refreshing. Maybe I'll run the simulator with a 3/52/16 spec. I'm not super familiar with Kahorie's DK simulator with using GoD though.


[edit] I'm still a bit baffled as to why my BCB dmg is very low

[edit2] Looking over what I had done previously to calculate 1 point in subversion by multiplying the obliterate dmg by .0435 and getting 1.63% dps increase, I think doing it this way assumes you have zero % crit chance. So taking my 1.63% dps increase and multiplying by .57 which was my obliterate crit chance I get .93% which seems a lot more reasonable and closer to what I calculated in this post.

Bear in mind that although many classes have execute-style effects, very few of them make a significant difference to dps. Notably, [frost]fire mages and affliction warlocks have powerful execute effects, in the form of molten fury and death's embrace/drain soul, respectively, which provide a vast increase to their low-health dps. Execute isn't a significant increase for warriors, and talents like decimation and dirty deeds are essentially non-factors as they don't appear commonly in raids. Hammer of wrath and kill shot provide moderate increases for ret pallies and hunters, I believe, but the dps increase is hardly on the scale you propose. Obviously this will vary with your raid comp, but I'd be surprised if the average raid's dps increased by even 5% between 80% and 20%, so you're talking about maybe 33.9% of a tank-and-spank fight during which MC is active, or 3.3-3.4 min in MC range given 6.5 min out. Your numbers claim that rDPS increases by 75% when the boss hits 35% health, which is excessive to say the least, even if you assume that heroism is always popped around 20%.

Regardless, Merciless Combat's greatest worth is not in its averaged-out dps value, but the additional value it provides when low health is the important burn phase.

I don't see why this is still discussed as it was all calculated and settled as a personal matter several pages ago. Although taking points from Merciless Combat wasn't talked about I think Asphyxia kind of made it clear you shouldn't want to do this by showing us his math putting MC slightly above 2% for 2/2 and BCB at 1.8% (which if even for 2/3 is lower) and due to the RNG/debuff-effects on BCB. Also as Teiglin says above me the low health-phases are usually the important burn phases.

I'm still keeping my opinion about threats. I don't understand why your reference would make it any relevant, since in patchwerk-like fights, those tanks are doing 7 - 10k tps which is massively more than 5k tps we're producing as predicted in the simulator in patchwerk-like fights. In addition, let's do a little bit of analysis:

The rotation always start with:

IT > PS > OB > BS > BS > FS > FS (the first 10s)

Both IT and PS will produce very low threats. After that you have OB to have a chance to give massive threats. Then 2x BS will do low threats as well. So basically you're giving the tank at least 3s to build up aggro before commencing on the first high threat attack, and 10s to build up aggro in total before nuking as hard as you can with the 2nd part of the rotation: OB > OB > OB > FS > FS > FS. Honestly I don't see why the tank can have any problem with holding the aggro, as I myself have never been able to produce massive threats at the start of any fight. Because of the way we build up our diseases before the fight starts, we will never be able to produce a lot of snap aggro at the beginning of the fight. However you are right, the threat reduction will always put you in low threat category which should not be discounted.

Regarding BCB vs. Subversion: It was producing 50 dps difference per 3 points in total when I run the sims without sigil of Awareness but with sigil of Virulence and 4xt8. 50 dps is not significant, but my concern is once tier 9 comes into play and we abandon tier 8, the dps difference could get even wider.

BCB is unreliable, and you can see it visually. Subversion is unreliable in the same way, but you can't see it visually unfortunately. No matter what you do, RNG won't allow you to crit at the same rate with OB in every single fights. RNG behaves the same way for BCB, so sometimes it procs more sometimes it won't.

For AoE fights, if you count in all the AoE you've done, surely BCB won't make up much of the portions in your dps (you can see it by checking parses). However, the % of which Obliterate counts toward your dps will be much lower, hence the effectiveness of Subversion is much lower - but you can't see it visually when checking parses because there simply are nothing you can see from Subversion. If you're using runes to cast Howling Blast to AoE, surely Subversion will be less valuable because you're trading Obliterate for more AoE damages from Howling Blast. BCB is not affected by such.

I do agree that in some fights where melee get jacked up dps, tanks may have trouble holding aggro (I could only count in Hodir so far, where melee may get buffs while tank doesn't). However in a mobile fight, a decent tank would be able to keep 90% of aggro despite the movement, while the melee cannot do 90% of his dps on boss (a tank would be on boss more than a melee dps would be). Hence, the value of threats the melee dps produces will be lower as well. If a decent tank can hold up aggro in a patchwerk-like fight, I don't see any reason why he cannot hold up aggro in a mobile fight as well.

The words "personal preference" pretty much sum up the whole discussion. Math shows both BCB and Subversion close to eachother as DPS talents, even if it leans toward BCB. The actualy discussion isn't going anywhere, and it's not part of the "need to find out" issues of the thread either.

There are many different types of fights, and we could pull out different examples of where one of the talents would be better than the other. Fights where it is hard to manage threat (Hodir comes to mind, and maybe revamped Onyxia if she keeps the Wing Buffet attack)or fights where you run in and out at least once every 20 seconds could favor Subversion more due to threat reduction and more Obliterates per auto attacks.

BCB pulls ahead assuming you stay on the boss most of the time and get the most benefit out of auto attacks, and it scales with Haste. Together with Necrosis and white attacks, it creates a synergy of scaling with haste, juicing out a bit more out of a stat we don't really want but will end up with anyway.

If you're talking about Kahorie's DK simulator, it says in the read me file that
"* Merciless Combat is active 35% of the time simulation"
So the simulator doesn't calculate any type of diminishing returns on that.

@Foxx2405 the 3/53/15 spec you suggested, does it include improved icy talons? or deathchill/UA? If I wanted to pickup improved icy talons and UA what would be the best talent to drop for UA, probably 1 pt in necrosis?

@Meygaera: You can check my armory-link here to the left for such a build, personally i went with 1 points from KM but I guess necrosis would be about the same.

Ok, yea I tried the armory link but it was an EU server and for some reason wasn't loading properly, thanks anyways.

Alright, so what I said was true.

The simulator creates an absolutely maximized personal raid DPS environment where you actually have a full 35% of the simulation with execute, but it doesn't take into consideration the execute range of other classes thus the shorter duration of your'e actual execute range. Since this is the case, and BCB already showed to be better DPS above, that would mean the only reason to take MC over BCB is if its a mobile fight or if the execute range is an important factor to the fight (Algalon / Yogg). I would imagine proper use of UA would assist MC more than BCB, however, as I said, I don't use UA and thus I don't include it in my calculations.

@Asphyxia: Didn't your calculations show BCB was inferior though, you mentioned 2.0X% for 2/2 MC and 1.8 for 2/3 BCB. The execute-phases also tend to be important burn phases on alot of bosses (i.e. Steelbreaker) and alot of guilds opt for using Heroism/Bloodlust at around this percentage.

If anything we can call this a personal preference too. We should refrain from calling what's the "true" best DPS per point until actual simming and proper calculations have been done, since you usually aren't objective enough to be the one guy calling it out. For example _alot_ of people DO use UA.

I mentioned that as part of my actual log (the Jaraxxus log), which differs quite a bit considering I am GoDisease spec and not IIT as I was going over the simulations and math for above. Obviously MC will be a bigger bonus to GoDisease setup than IIT as the use of OB / FS is significantly higher. In the simulations of an IIT build the BCB and MC numbers alter, and provided the encounter is perfect the entire time that BCB out performed MC by ~35 dps (with MC having a higher up time than it would in a raid setting, making actual raid data show that MC should be worth less) of sustained.

As mentioned in the above posts, who really cares about 35 dps when you're pushing 7100+ on most stand still and blow everything up kind of fights, RNG alone can cause a larger effect on DPS than that. Also, in addition to that, the point of MC is to be available during times where extra damage is more vital (the most common example being Yogg and Algalon). Also, how many fights are there where you can remain on your target 100% and not miss a single melee strike via movement, target swapping, etc.? Pretty much no current fights.

Really, it comes down to preference. I personally ran 3/53/15 longer than 3/51/17, but I didn't notice a difference in DPS between parses outside OB / FS / HB doing slightly more damage to compensate for the lack of BCB.

I think it's really time to drop the subject of where to put a random 5 points that might make 0.1-0.3% dps difference. If my KM procs an extra time i already got that dps difference out of there.

I think most of the stuff that has to be said on the subject has been said. The general consensus is that Subversion is better than BCB due to the secondary benefit (threat reduction). DPS wise the difference between pulling points from Subv / BCB / MC / KM is less than getting an unlucky streak on a boss. These difference fade away in the random RNG that you will encounter on a boss.

As for UA. I think it is save to say that it IS a dps boost, but only if you:
a) Know at what time in your rotation to pop it. If you use it at the wrong moment, it could be dps decrease.
b) Know when to save UA for burst moments or chain it whenever the cooldown comes up.

Again we're talking small dps differences though, simulators (which pretty much is best case scenario) showed something like 100 dps gain if i remember correctly.
When doing 7k dps that is still only about 1.5% dps. That's nice, but again if you mess up your rotation by popping UA in the wrong moment you might nullify that gain.

I think we should close the subject of these small preference changes though, and shift our focus to the CC gear combinations. And drop the talent issue unless it's about a big differences (blood / unholy subspec; even though a lot of that has been discussed as well).

Just wanted to get a sanity check on one item with the GoDisease spec rotation.

In the OP, the suggested rotation "once diseases are up" is:

OB,OB,BS,Pest,RP,RP
OB,OB,RP,OB,RP,RP

The item I'm looking for a sanity check on is the, "once disease are up" portion of the post. In order to produce a state where you can proceed with the actual GoDisease rotation, you must have FFUUBB runes available and 0 Death Runes active while FF and BP are both up on the target. If your opener round is:

IT,PS,OB,BS,Pest,RP
OB,OB,RP,OB,RP

It would create a situation where you have FFUUBB available and 0 Death Runes active while both diseases are up on the target. This is the only viable method of producing the required state for the GoDisease rotation round that I can see within the disease duration time constraints (assuming 200ms of latency at 1.7s per GCD). Is there some other rotation that is used as an opener?

Since I have a trinket with an AP proc which usually procs within the first 5 to 10 seconds of a fight, I usually start with an obliterate, blood strike, blood strike, frost strike to get it to proc, then with my left over U/F runes I do the IT PS. Usually it will proc off the initial obliterate and I can throw them up there. Sometimes I get lucky and the trinket procs and FC. Usually its just the trinket, and later when I see my trinket and FC up, I find a spot to throw UA in safely and redo my IT PS.

I've seen this question asked numerous times, but never have I seen a clear answer (one that doesn't spam me with all sorts of numbers -- because I'm terrible at math -- which are appreciated, but mean very little to me. All I see are hieroglyphics) as to the gem stat priority for a DW Frost DPS. Should I ever gem for hit or expertise? Is 9% hit dangerously low in the case of DW Frost, or should I just hold it to gear to get me through and gem strictly for strength as I've always done?

I gem for expertise to ensure I remain at the dodge cap, but I haven't really noticed any shortage of hit on Ulduar gear, and am spell hit capped as it stands without gemming at all, so I've never really been in a situation where I've been that low on hit, not since I started DWing in 3.2.

@Sabellian: It HAS been answered before without "math", not without numbers though, since thats the only way to answer it! Both the expertise softcap and the special hit cap (5% for frost DW cause of NoCS) are worth more than strength and "should" be gemmed for. The spell hit cap is still worth quite a lot (compared to what we guessed it would be) but not on top of strength.

The spell hit cap being lower than strength in EP has raised some objections that are related to its utility advantage of leaving rotations intact that I'd like to address. The devastation of a single rotation at a random point in time will drop DPS at that time but that is something that the simulator does take into account. It does devastate its simulated rotation and it does start over again. Therefore one would assume that the logical conclusion is that indeed spell hit capping is worse than strength stacking in the overall DPS.

However, one can see the opposite making sense is in a 'reliability' scenario: "I want a rotation now and I want it to work".

Therefore we have two paths that can be followed:

a) Maximized overall DPS with less reliability in the short term (by ignoring spell hit cap and gemming strength after hit and expertise soft caps)
b) Short term reliability with less overall DPS (by hitting spell hit cap before stacking strength)


edit:

c) A middle road, covering some points towards spell hit capping but not quite reaching it, to have higher but not absolute rotational reliability and higher, but not maximized, overall DPS. This I suppose is what many do by accident (especially with many not knowing 8% is not the soft cap in DW) therefore 'why did I not beat him in this boss when he doesn't pay attention to theory?'.

The easiest way to approach Expertise and Hit in relation to a rotation is that they aren't actually increasing your DPS, rather they are reducing the chance that you suffer a DPS loss. The closer you get to the caps, the smaller the chance is for a miss or dodge, but if a miss or dodge occurs it's as big of a DPS loss no matter if you have 0 expertise or .5% to cap.

The closer to cap you get, the smaller the chance of getting a dodge or a miss is. If you have 1% miss chance, you will theoretically miss 1% of your abilities. But the actual number of misses could be 2 or 3 out of 100 specials, or 0 on 200 specials due to the 1% being applied to each attack separately. In case A, capping Expertise would have increased your DPS more than Strength. In case B, the extra Expertise would have done nothing.

Overall, capping Spell hit and Expertise ensures that you will never lose any damage because of your rotation breaking, but it's impossible to set an accurate point worth for the stats as the effectiveness of the stats all rely on chance.