It makes sense, since if you are GCD limited, a missed attack is especially painful. And since 11 of your 12 attacks can be dodged, its especially important. Spell hit ends up being much less important though, because its only applied to 1/12th of your rotation.

Expertise for frost used to be much less interesting, since Frost Strike used to not need it.

My mistake. Seems right with the glyph of disease rotation.

I've seen two things that could be related to this. One is that if you use blood tap it doesn't just turn a blood rune into a death rune. It gives you a buff that turns one blood rune into a death rune for the duration. When the buff expires, it reverts to a blood rune even if it would "naturally" be a death rune anyway. So if you notice this effect in concert with blood tap usage, that is your likely culprit. This can be solved by manually cancelling the buff. Many people make a cancelaura macro for this purpose.

Second is that since 3.2 I have seen several examples of blood runes showing on my display as available, when I know that I have used them too recently for that to be true. And indeed if I try to use them I cannot until the proper interval has elapsed. This seems to me to be purely a bug in the UI or the server to client communication. The server always seems to have the right information.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

Algalon parse - Obliterate = 36.7% damage with GoDisease.

I've got this problem several times on mimiron hard this night, and neither of Intropy's suggestions was the problem. I clearly had my BT available, and still I had 1 blood rune and 1 death rune stuck for more than 30s. I tried blood striking twice, spamming OB to verify if it was a display bug, blood taping with the death rune on CD and canceling the buff after nothing changed, I even tried to abuse the pestilence bug (the one that generates two death runes) and none worked. The only way I got out of it was Bloob boiling twice, however it happened again on the same try.

My guess it is something with changing presences with a Death rune active, since it always happened on phase 2 and I changed to unholy presence to dump my RP better. I also got the sigil of virulence today, but it's probably not related.

I changed my build around a bit to incorporate UA and have noticed that if I try to use Blood Tap and then Unbreakable Armor I'll *usually* end up with 1 death rune and 1 blood rune. I've had times where this doesn't happen, but due to the timer on blood tap it's hard for me to test exactly what's going on.
Seems the only way I can reliably preserve my death runes is to lose a blood strike and use UA + blood Tap first in my rotation, which seems to always work without an issue.

Is there something stupid and obvious I'm missing here?

Odd thing about RI I said a couple pages back actually seems to be true(from my testing, don't know if anyone else is getting this).

It actually seems better(for stacking) to have RI in the mainhand for the reason that it seems to put the RI stacks faster. This is due the the few seconds delay on the offhand strike. This makes FC activate a bit later but RI stacks faster. End result for FC should be relatively the same I believe. But faster stack RI seems like it would be better than a faster FC proc. It actually seems to take quite awhile to proc on the offhand. Not sure if this is dps decrease or increase though, since faster FC is more damage as well.

Other note is I am actually using this build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with glyph of IT as the third glyph but HB/BS/PS should be fine as well(probably better actually, this just lets me FS earlier in the rotation when I get a KM). The main difference is there is no CoTG, and you could move points in BCB to Sub or UA if you want. This actually works fairly well for me I am not really RP or GCD starved.

I use IT>PS>OB>BS>BS + 1 dump (6 GCDs) then OB>OB>OB + 2 dumps and any rime or HoW (5+ GCD) on single targets. I also weave a FS in whenever I get a KM like the old frost build. W/O IT glyph(with) I get 100 RP - 96 = 4 (14) RP left. which is better than CoTG with 125 RP - 96 = 29 (39-32 = 7)RP left. As you can see from this either way you can only fit 3 dumps, so I made my build with less waste.


This doesn't include druid/priest RP generation which almost always gives enough RP for another FS, even w/o CoTG.

Overall:
-Less RP waste
-enough GCD for 3 dumps and Rime all the time.
-I use all rime procs since I have the time for it. I'll only wait a 1 or 2 GCD for a KM.

For people using a 12 GCD rotation
This uses 11 + 1 Rime or HoW each.

13 GCD rotation:
11 + 1 or 2 rime + HoW if only 1 rime.

From that you can see it is hard to get a 4th FS in unless you are using GoD, since that uses the same rotation with more waste. Eventually that leads to much RP.

It actually slightly easier to get in 2 Rime over a 4th FS as Rime has a slightly lower GCD with haste. I think IT, HB, Pest, HoW, BB are effected by the haste GCD since they are spells. This makes it slightly easier to get in a 13th GCD if you need.

I think this is better than the spec on the OP, since you have less wasted talent points and RP with this build. The GoD might still be better for personal dps, but for those who want to bring a raid buff this works out better. GoD get OB over an IT+PS and possibly a FS. But this build can get in 1 more rime or FS if a druid/priest gives them RP or you use AMS, as well as this build has 5% more haste for more necrosis/BCB/KM/RI/FC procs. Also no "wasted" points in random utility.


@Raika
I post how to avoid that on the previous page. Others listed thier method as well. But I feel this is somewhat easiest to do since it makes no changes to your rotation and easily done with a macro and 2 clicks/press.

I'm doing 6.5 - 7 k on XT 25 man. with malice in my MH w/ fallen crusader and grasscutter w/ razorice in my off. I use IT full death rune priority rotation, spec 15 54 2. I use single disease in this rotation and it always put me on the top of charts. I am curious if others are having the same success with these new unholy dw double disease specs. I did some testing with two slow one handers and the melee damage came up short by about 400 damage

@Royksopp GoD actually gets a net loss of RP each time(not including rime and other sources of RP). It was designed for this basically so you get all your strongest moves in and no excess RP.

But realistically looking at raid conditions gives this:

First step is 125 RP and after that is 120 RP per rotations.
On the first step you use 96 RP. After that you use 128. giving a net loss of 8 RP per 20 sec rotation. Using rime make is only a 3 RP loss. Rough math gives about 3 min before you are starved for RP, assuming you get one rime per 20 sec rotation. (To clarify this abit. 125 - 96 = 29 RP left. Then 120 - 128 sustainable RP = -8. Add in rime net loss is 3. 29/3 * 20 sec = 193 s ~= 3.2 min to starve)

This is a 11 GCD + 1 Rime rotation.

For RP flood to happen in 12 GCD cycle:
-Get RP from druids/preist
-Casting HoW every 20 sec rotation instead of rime

For those who can get the 13 GCD rotation, 11 GCD + 1 Rime + 1 HoW or Rime.
This will always result in a RP flood.

The other cause is that HB gives 5 RP per target hit which pretty much will flood you with RP in any AoE situation.

I ran a 5000h EP calculation during last night using this spec 2/53/16 with Glyph of BS since we have a FFB mage in our raids.

the stats:

EP :AttackPower = 100

EP :Strength = 268

EP :Agility = 121

EP :CritRating = 156

EP :HasteRating = 50

EP :ArmorPenetrationRating = 190

EP :ExpertiseRating = 281

EP :HitRating = 418

EP :SpellHitRating = 43

EP :WeaponDPS = 703

EP :WeaponSpeed = 32812

EP :2T8 = 11538

EP :4T8 = 13846

EP :2T9 = 26461

I dunno why I have such bad values for haste in there could it be because of just 1/3 BCB?

Well there are situations where it just messes up. And blood tap's irregular behaviour is the culprit of that.

That is why you sometimes want to cancel the blood tap macro, but other times you don't.

An example of one of the issues i came across:

IT>PS>OB>UA>BS>BS

Ok, now the issue with this at first was that UA macro turns one of the blood runes into a deathrune. For some reason though it doesn't go on cooldown, basically i get this:
IT: FfUUBB
PS: FfUuBB
OB: ffuuBB
UA: ffuuDB

Now i can do 2 things, i can ignore the deathrune or i can blow it off on blood strike. If i do the latter something odd happens. The deathrune will revert to a blood rune the next rotation. Meaning you end up with an irregular BD pattern.
You can also leave it alone, that fixes it for the next part of the rotation. However i've seen blood tap do crazy things after you use it in the next part on obliterate (2 deathrunes) and blood tap runs out around then, I think i've had it reset the counter on the blood rune sometimes. (5 sec left on BT deathrune, expires, 10 sec left on regular blood rune).
Can not confirm the last to be 100% true though, could just be my mistake.

Either way, the way i've handled it for this situation is that I use a cancelaura macro which i pop after UA.
That way the moment UA popped the Deathrune from BT is changed back to blood giving this:
IT: FfUUBB
PS: FfUuBB
OB: ffuuBB
UA: ffuuBB

after which i can blow them away with 2x blood strike.

The problem is that you don't want to cancelaura when you want that deathrune to be a deathrune. In this situation you do not want to cancelaura:
OB: FfUuDD
OB: ffuuDD
UA: ffuuDD

If you use the cancelmacro there, you're again stuck with a BD combination that messes things up.

A way to solve both situations is to macro a cancelaura to bloodstrike, since you only use that when you have blood runes recharging.

I'm gonna do some dummy tests and see if i can get out all possible ways you can mess this thing up, but from what i think it goes like this

A rotation consists of 2 rune cycles; rotations take 20 seconds, rune cycle takes is 10 seconds.
IT>PS>OB>BS>BS
OB>OB>OB

That is a rotation, and each line is a runic cycle. (I call it that way otherwise people get confused)

Divide a rune cycle (10 second) up in 2 blocks
Unholy Frost rune block and the BB/DD block.

Using the UA macro anywhere in the UF block usually leads to problems. The main reason is that you use a frost rune for UA and then generate a death rune to fix obliterate.
In the first rune cycle of the rotation that costs you 1 blood strike (after all, you use 1 converted deathrune with blood tap to use on obliterate). And in this situation you can NOT use a cancelmacro, because that deathrune you used on obliterate needs to be a deathrune in the second half of your rotation as well.
In the second rune cycle its just as bad, because you use a frost rune for UA and then convert a deathrune to a deathrune. You lose 1 obliterate here.

That means you can only effectively use it before you use the BB or DD runes, or right after.
If you use them right before you use your blood/death runes you're always good if you use a cancelmacro on bloodstrike.
In the first runic cycle you will convert a death rune use it on UA. At this point something weird happens, which I dont know why really, but basically you still keep that deathrune (anyone knows why ?). So you have DB runes up after UA and you can use 2x BS. The first will use the blood rune and the cancelmacro on BS will convert the other back to a blood rune, which you blow on a second bloodstrike.
In the second runic cycle you use one of the deathrunes on UA, then right after convert it back to another deathrune, and you can burn both on obliterate. You won't cancelmacro here so your runes will refresh as DB rune, however you have the cancelmacro on BS to fix that again.

If you use it after the BB/DD runes you should be fine with UA as well as long as you pop it right after you used the blood/deathrunes. Otherwise you delay your rotation too much.

What you also can do is have a seperate cancelmacro, that gives a bit more flexibility. However that is another button to push and another action to perform in a GCD stressed enviroment. I prefer an integrated cancelmacro myself.

I think ill run some dummy tests on the stuff i wrote above and see if i'm correct. In theory its fairly simple though: Use UA before you use your Blood or Deathrunes. It does mean that UA has somewhat limited usability, as you can only pop it in a ~1 second window every 10 seconds. So unlike say a gargoyle or dancing rune weapons you can NOT always pop it whenever you like.
With DRW or Gargoyle i get the ammount of RP i need as soon as i know we (are gonna) have bloodlust. And then i wait when my procs are up as well (preferably at least 2 out of 3) and then i can mash the cooldown whenever. UA does not have that freedom, so it could be that you miss out on a trinketproc or something because you're in the wrong part of your rotation.

Lot of text, i know, but its the best way i could discribe the problem I'm talking about.

I'm very sorry if I missed any post on gemming for Frost Dual Wield DPS. I can't find one so here goes.

What's the overall thoughts on gemming now? For 2h Blood ArP was highly though of. Should we just be gemming for STR as Frost DW?

Has anybody done any kind of extensive testing of what to gem for?

On another note, I managed to pull over 9k on Hodir Last night. Also did XT-Hard and I pulled around 6.2k. I've done more before on XT but the fight just lasted way to long yesterday. Also got 1 too many bombs on me.