Did you guys ever think about the possibility of dropping reaping since the recent nerfs to SS in 3.2?

In our normal Unholy rotation we have enough space for an additional GCD.

Rotation would be:

PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-DC
DC-SS-SS-BS-BS-DC

All Sims done with the predefined 2H Ulduar-Set (4PCT8 included)

17-0-54 with Reaping - 7138 dps

17-0-54 without Reaping - 7177 dps

Now the same Sim done with 4PCT9 (other Stats remaining)

17-0-54 with Reaping - 7495 dps

17-0-54 without Reaping - 7547 dps


Now the same Sim done with 4PCT9 and + 200 Str (other Stats remaining) just looking for some sort of scaling

17-0-54 with Reaping - 7880 dps

17-0-54 without Reaping - 7934 dps

Looking at this numbers you are gaining roughly 50 dps... don´t have any trouble with Blood Tap destroying your rotation... ARP will be a little bit more valuable... 2PCT9 will proc more often...

Perhaps someone can do the sims on his own to prove my statements or to show me, how foolish i am...

Edit: Put in Rotation

/cancelaura Blood Tap
/cast Blood Tap

Hit this macro after you Scourge Strike with your death runes, hit Bone Shield, then hit the macro again.

edit: I believe you can also simply Blood Tap and Bone Shield after using Blood Strike without your rotation being affected.

With the way Death Runes and Blood Tap work right now Blood Tapping after Blood Striking will drop the Death Rune back to a Blood Rune. After doing an FU strike with Death Runes while all your runes are on cooldown is the best time to refresh bone shield for sure.

You'll also want to cancel Blood Tap after you use it, if the Blood Tap buff fades after a Blood Strike, the upcoming Death Rune will get thrown back to a Blood Rune.

It wasn't always like this, Blizzard has made quite a few unannounced changes to the rune system from time to time. For example, having a Blood Strike avoided used to instantly create a Death Rune, but that was "fixed" some time ago.

When both my Death Runes are up (and before any Unholy runes refresh) I hit Bone Shield and then Blood Tap. Obliterate. Macro to cancel the Blood Tap buff (so it doesn't cause any of those random yet irritating blood/death rune issues). Smoothest way I've found to handle things without it messing up your rotation (which this shouldn't - it takes a GCD to refresh Bone Shield, but that's just how BS works regardless of when you use it, and you should have the extra to spare anyways).

Anyways, unfortunately, all of that talk is soon to be quite irrelevant.

Bensch is indeed right. Doing 17/0/54 with and without Reaping, as well as 11/0/60 with and without Reaping, Reaping definitely loses. No question. The average SS is approximately ~6500 (depending on which spec and such) while the average BS is ~3200 (once again, depending on which spec). Three talent points for an extra 100 damage every 20 seconds (5 dps) just isn't worth it. And it is really that simple since SS and 2 BS both generate the same amount of RP, and we have the extra GCD to spare so the latter isn't any hassle in that regard. 3 points in Necrosis/Desolation/Bladed Armor/Dark Conviction (which they go in all depends on which spec you are, and whether you are pre 4p t9 or post 4p t9) easily wins out. My sim (of which I did many) results were showing it to be more like a 60-70 dps increase instead of a 50 one as Bensch was getting, but either way, it's definitely a single target dps increase. It's also an AoE one as Reaping has zero value in that regard already, but whatever talent you take will at least give you something.

I can rerun the EP values tomorrow (as well as the ones for other specs, which I keep pushing off), but it should increase the value of ArP by about ~15%ish. Still makes it a horrible stat, relatively speaking, but at least it will beat out agility and post-melee-pre-spell-cap hit. Crit may change slightly in value too, but nothing which will affect gearing. Everything else should be the same, more or less.

Has the side effect of giving Desolation better uptime (which, simmed, won't show, but in reality, will certainly help) and, as said, giving 2p t9 slightly better uptime as well (not terribly so because of the ICD, but still, higher is higher, so a definite plus).

I've editted the OP to reflect all of this (since I don't really see it being disproved. The math is very basic and very easy. If anything, I'm kinda surprised how no one thought of it before - or at least thought to prove it and then post of it. Disappointed in myself!). Barring any actual changes to the PTR, this is probably (hopefully) the last thing which will change the specs.

It will lead to lower SoV uptime, but not significantly so, and whatever loss from SoV you suffer is easily outweighed by the raw dps gain from those three talent points, the higher uptime on 2p T9, and the potentially higher uptime on Desolation.

So, yes, it might make SoV slightly less valuable, but SoV will stilll be the best sigil by far, and no Reaping will still be a free dps increase over the alternative.

With only 3 SS you have 1 - 0.2^3 chance of having at least a proc in a full rotation (80% proc chance from the sigil).
That's 99.2%, down from 1 - 0.2^4 = 99.88% chance with 4SS, so a pretty small difference which should not change the total uptime very much.

On the other hand with 2pT9 (50% proc chance) you had 1 - 0.5^2 = 75% chance of at least a proc in a rotation (if not in cooldown of course).
With 4 BS it will be 1 - 0.5^4 = 93.75%. The impact on the uptime should be very noticeable.

First time, Long time

I'm not sure if it would be a dps loss or gain to change the rotation to keep 2PC T9 up and SoV uptime maxed. Spreading out the strikes that can trigger the procs to help with internal cooldowns.

PS > IT > BS > SS > BS > RP Dump
SS > BS > SS > BS > RP Dump

I used this rotation in 3.0 before I started reading here about the benefits of reaping. I also liked that if I was in need of a DnD or Pest the blood rune wasn't far off.

I have a feeling that the idea of no Reaping wont last once Blizzard gets a wif of this discussion but if we asume it becomes the new Unholy rotation then we end up with a very basic first-come-first-serve cooldown rotation.

In fact you can easily macro it into a single button masher that follows the initial IT+PS using the following logic

cast SS
ifnot
cast BS

the rest is ... break for Rune Dump ... watch for diseases falling off

So much for skill.

No you can't.

Do tell.

Unless the first skill is without a GCD, then it'll work, but only then I think?

I guess that we'll see how much Blizzard thinks we should use Death runes, and if it's ok for us to dps without utilizing them. As long as the talents stay as they are, it seems we'll have to spec either way depending on the strength of SS at the time.