I run with 750 ms so this might not be helpful but I use the

/cast Blood Tap
/stopcasting
/cast Bone Shield

Which I combine with

/cast Blood Strike
/cast !Rune Strike
/cancelaura Blood Tap

and I use it when all runes are down at the very end of a rotation after blowing my 3rd SS, usually when I have low RP for an extra DC so it goes a little something like this:

PS>IT>BS>BS>SS>DC | SS>SS>SS>MACRO (Press Twice Quickly) DC>DC>HoW

If you do it correctly you end up with extra GCD's from Boneshield, 1 extra DC and horn of winter. When combining that with GCD's from refreshing diseases and the first blood strike it should fit seemlessly into your next rotation.

You don't need Improved Unholy Presence. I have runspeed on my boots and it's enough. You can cut the time running with playing cleverly, like letting yourself get kicked back to the boss or not chasing the brown ooze until it's dead.


It's under 70% for me now.

It's definitely a nice boost on Putricide, and the DPS loss from the two talent points is fairly minor. You'll run faster than someone with only the boot enchant, and actually have a decent boot enchant on top of it. Hard to actually quantify the DPS gain though of course.

I would just as soon switch to UH Presence when running from Gas Clouds and the like.

you think the 6 agility is really worth it over 15 stamina?

When running from Gas Clouds.

I'd rather not incite a lengthy discussion about run speed boot enchants, but the benefit gained from them has always been something I was skeptical about.

If you're running from something. It's very likely you're not going to be using your runes anyway, so switching to UH Presence is better than the enchants. If you're able to DPS immediately after you're done running, you can just switch to Blood Presence and hit Blood Tap to get the rune right back.

If you're running a long distance (from one of the illusion rooms into Yogg's Brain Room, for instance), the same holds true.

If you're not running from something or running a long distance, how much DPS will the run speed actually give you over Icewalker? Like you said, though, the boot enchant is easy to get. Icewalker is cheap as well. It's not as if each enchant is worth several hundred gold, so I suppose it's a trivial argument.

Why wouldn't it be? DKs have 0 survivability issues if played correctly and 6 agility provides a (small) DPS boost whit 15 stamina provides none.

As a side thought, how exactly does AP benefit AoTD in terms of coefficients? I realize this question is quite trivial (and more of a curiosity thing than anything else), but I'm not entirely sure how much AP affects AoTD's damage, nor can I find the old AoTD threat or any other information about it.

I doubt it. First of all you're pretty much wasting greatness uptime outside of combat by using it this way. I think every advantage the greatness on army would give is offset by the fact it's ticking away outside of combat.
The damage increase your army will see from the greatness buff is pretty small as well, especially after the nerf.

The haste pot is not something that is only for Herbalists.

If I'm using army, i generally pop them before a fight without any procs up. Save my trinkets for gargoyle which generally does a lot more damage as well. Another benefit is that since I personally use both greatness and WFS, they're always up when gargoyle comes back up due to the 45 sec ICD.

I tried popping army in combat for a while too, but i figured out that the damage in the end isnt worth it. If i'm doing 9000 dps, and army does about 900 dps over it course, than the 4 second channeling time and the 40 second up time cancel each other out in damage done.

But i think that the loss from 42 extra strength (JC) and losing at the very least 4-5 seconds on greatness (realistically probably closer to its full duration, unless your tank times running in well), is not really worth going herbalism over to get an early greatness buffed army off.

I think they scale pretty well with buffs, the problem however is that their dps in the end is relative so minute compared to the dps time you lose with channeling in combat that the dps gain nearly equals zero.

The only thing i'd see worth while with army is to pop it before a fight with an Indestructable Potion up. But since the damage nerf the damage i'd gain from them is pretty low in the end, and only usable on certain fights.

I believe that in the OP, it is stated that even on a Patchwork type fight, channeling AoTD mid combat is still a DPS gain. While you may be correct that it is small, it's a DPS gain nonetheless.

The damage from AoTD isn't negligible - in one of the logs I posted above, AoTD did ~35k damage - this is damage that is essentially 'free', as you can (and should when applicable) cast it pre-pull, allowing no interruptions on your rotation.

With regards to my original question, I was leaning more towards an 'x AP provides y more damage for AoTD', if anyone had some type of information on that. While small, it may be something that can be modeled in the simulator (if it hasn't been already).

As it's been mentioned before, the dps loss while casting army mid fight is a lot smaller. Of that 8500 dps, a quite big portion is Frost Fever, Blood Plague, Ghoul, Unholy Blight, Wandering plague and possibly Gargoyle (see all procs up); which is damage that is not halted by your channeling.