You are indeed correct, so I revoke that portion of my comment. Though my point was more in the statements that followed, being that Unholy is still, at this point and gear level, more productive in the fight than blood. That goes along with the survivability advantages and not being "gimped" by losing blood-gorged for being under 75% which will happen and multiple times during the fight by the nature of the mechanics.

Gotta love how they poured most of the offensive stats into stamina on this ring.

Anyway, assuming you gem the agility version with 20 strength and the strength version with 10 str/10 crit; you gain and lose:

-135 attackpower
-88 agility
+93 strength (99 + 10(gem) + 4(socket) - 20(gem))
+10 crit rating

If you use the 251/258 stat weights (which is what most of us are at now):

-135 AEP
-119.7 AEP
+281.8 AEP
+19.5 AEP
=
+46.61 AEP (~ 28 dps)

Very slight gain.

The gain is actually pretty good considering that what we had before would have been worse for us than this new ring. So, I'm going to assume that this is going to be a BiS for awhile until Heroic Modes are available. Would that be a safe assumption?

Lately I have been casting AotD right after the fight starts and I have all my procs up and Gargoyle cast. I immediately use ERW after casting Gargoyle or a couple of my procs fall off and I want all of them up for when I cast AotD. Last week and now this week too everytime I have tried to do this my AotD spell is immediately interrupted/stops casting and I cannot figure out why. This has happened on several bosses in Ulduar/ToGC/ICC. Has anyone else experienced this problem, heard about this or know why it could be happening? Thanks.

I find it personally as a dps increase when I cast AotD as all my procs are up, but it's really annoying that I am not able to do that anymore lately. A couple other DKs in my guild said they have had that happen to them as well. I was able to cast it on Festergut last week when all my procs were up and I just tried it again today in my 10 man group and it became interrupted. I shall try it again in 25 man in the next couple hours hopefully and see if it still does it. Just wanted to know if anyone else was experiencing this. I am certainly not moving while casting it.

Edit: I have a feeling it has something to do with the lag in our battlegroup, you may disregard this.

Since it was already a wipe in progress, I decided I would test out the scenario he listed (Procs up -> ERW -> AotD) on BQL.

Figured you would be right and it was just something he did that interrupted it. However, my cast of AotD was instantly interrupted. I would assume even if it was Muru style AoE damage knockback on cast times, I'd manage to at least get 1 AotD ghoul out, but it was an instant interrupt as if I had intentionally cancelled it. Didn't even shoot out a purple swirley beam.

So, what he's saying can happen. What causes it, I couldn't say.

I think I had this happen in TOGC. I zoned out and forgot to AOTD prepull, so I tried to AOTD after gormok was dead but before the worms came out, and it was instantly interrupted. I thought I must have been retarded and moved accidentally, but after seeing this I'm not so sure >.>

Worth looking into, I'll try to pop AOD during some boss fights in 10 mans tomorrow and see what happens.

Well look at the opportunity cost of casting it before a pull and using your runes for a scourge strike and a blood strike. If the dps from having a full AotD during the boss fight with your procs up then by all means use it. Well on bosses like festergut you have raid-wide damage that happens which is why your cast finishes early because Plague Blight might still be on the ground or you got the dot that ticked and interrupted it.. there are many situations where that can happen.

I have been struggling to calculate the difference between bryn and cryptmaker and after two days of playing with rawr I am more confused then I was before the beggining.

I have tried dozen of setups, starting from my current (4/5 t9 plus badge rewards 264 and stuff...nothing impressive to be honest). And the Bryn toll came up as the best choice by large margin (which i expected, due to the fact that bryn doesnt scale that much as a cryptmaker). So i went on and started to mix the equipement towards iLvl277 items and all the way there, bryn was 100+ dps better choice...even at full ilvl 277 set and BiS items. That confused me even more, so i started to play around with a hit cap and useage of the hit on the weapon itself...and now the weird stuff comes.

Even if i set up items to max str/arp and other stats and forget about the hit cap, the bryn is still quite a lot better choice then cryptmaker. Even if i am 50 hit rating under the hit cap, cryptmaker is way behind the bryn.

Did any of you tried to calculate this via rawr? Because in my mind, crypt makes more sense and mathematicaly speaking i kind of know that as the gear gets better, crypt starts to overcome bryn...and by the time i ge to ilvl 277 and certain stat values, it beats bryn for sure. Yet still, the rawr tells me otherwise...any suggestions? :O

I've had these mysterious interrupts happen nearly everytime I try to cast AOTD with some sort of AE aura in the area in ICC. It seems fairly obvious that this is the cause of the interrupts, but to say that this is working as intended is clearly off as the ability is still supposed to reduce the damage you take for the channeling duration.

I'd posted about it on the official forums before but so far haven't seen any official response, hopefully it gets fixed soon. There aren't many situations where it comes up, but it's frustrating when it does.

As Kaejin said.

Army of the Dead
"Summons an entire legion of Ghouls to fight by your side. The Ghouls will swarm the area, taunting and fighting anything they can. While channelling Army of the Dead, you will take less damage equal to your Dodge plus Parry chance."

It would be rather silly to implement this mechanic for the skill, and to be able to receive interupt via damage.. You're propably moving / something is bugged / or it's some other unknown reason.


On the other hand, talking about pet bugging out, I have expirienced strange bug. Lately, and happens a lot, i could not cast DRW on myself in blood offspec. Furthermore, popping AotD and being unable to summon ghoul as well immidietly after, skill being darkened out (also in blood offspec).

Anyone else expirienced this?