Your SS and BS numbers in Spec B and Spec C are way off.

Spec A uses 4 BS and 2 SS in a 20sec window. (8% BS dmg, 8% SS dmg)

Spec B and Spec C should use 4 BS and 3 SS. Resulting in 50% more SS Dmg. (8%BS dmg, 12% SS dmg)

Your Results however show roughly 4% BS and 16% SS dmg. This would only be possible with Reaping. Doing 2BS and 4SS in 20 seconds.

Could it be possible, that you did your sims with additional points in reaping? It is possible in the sim to do this mistake, as you are not capped at 71 Talent Points.

Edit: Didn't took in consideration the lack of Reaping.

He should not have DeathRunes. And you can´t do SS with BloodRunes.

---------------------------------------------

Rotations:
RotaSingle1: PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-DC-DC
RotaSingle2: PS-IT-SS-BS-BB-DC-DC
RotaAE1: PS-IT-Pest-D&D-DC-DC-PS-IT-Pest-SS-BS-DC-DC
RotaAE9: PS-IT-SS-BS-Pest-DC-DC

Targets	2	2	2	2
	RotaSingle1	RotaSingle2	RotaAE1	RotaAE9
16-0-55	8168dps	8419dps	9596dps	9147dps

Conclusion:

Even with 2 Targets using D&D yields more dps.

Sigh, checking my templates, yes, they somehow still had Reaping in them. At least now I know why I couldn't ever replicate the same numbers as you guys. I spent all that time proving that 74 talent points does more DPS than 71, lol.

So, correcting that issue, and triple-checking the templates I get the following:

Spec A: 16-0-55 NoEpidemic IT Glyph

Ability	Total	%	Landed	Hit%	Crit%	Miss%	Average
MainHand	1475449978	21.1	347146	58.5	41.5	0	4250.2
DeathCoil	897635782	12.9	155387	65.2	34.8	0	5776.8
Ghoul	780290263	11.2	850500	87	13	0	917.4
BloodStrike	575928889	8.2	165632	49.3	50.7	0	3477.2
ScourgeStrike	572866336	8.2	82816	43	57	0	6917.3
Gargoyle	384390216	5.5	88748	87.1	12.9	0	4331.3
BloodPlague	363499631	5.2	252165	100	0	0	1441.5
FrostFever	363443490	5.2	252162	100	0	0	1441.3
PlagueStrike	331649020	4.7	82816	52.1	47.9	0	4004.6
Wandering Plague	303953755	4.4	210877	100	0	0	1441.4
Necrosis	295157904	4.2	347146	100	0	0	850.2
BloodCakedBlade	230608995	3.3	104218	100	0	0	2212.8
IcyTouch	230366570	3.3	82816	65.4	34.6	0	2781.7
UnholyBlight	179532397	2.6	155387	100	0	0	1155.4
Horn	0	0	8091	100	0	0	0
DPS 7761
Total Damage 6984.77m in 250h
Threat Per Second 3924
Generated in 406s
Template: Unholy 2h 16-0-55
Rotation: Unholy
Presence: Blood
Sigil: Virulence
RuneEnchant: FallenCrusader
Pet Calculation: True

Spec B: 15-0-56 1/2 Epidemic UB Glyph

Ability	Total	%	Landed	Hit%	Crit%	Miss%	Average
MainHand	1466138756	20.9	347146	58.5	41.5	0	4223.4
ScourgeStrike	919152995	13.1	133639	43	57	0	6877.9
DeathCoil	821701646	11.7	144967	65.2	34.8	0	5668.2
Ghoul	780946729	11.1	850500	87	13	0	918.2
BloodStrike	609718399	8.7	177948	49.1	50.9	0	3426.4
Gargoyle	384121458	5.5	89390	86.9	13.1	0	4297.1
FrostFever	376877266	5.4	267748	100	0	0	1407.6
BloodPlague	348344698	5	267539	100	0	0	1302
Wandering Plague	299778345	4.3	221403	100	0	0	1354
Necrosis	293210904	4.2	347146	100	0	0	844.6
UnholyBlight	230124496	3.3	144967	100	0	0	1587.4
BloodCakedBlade	216412462	3.1	104218	100	0	0	2076.5
PlagueStrike	160929599	2.3	44632	52.8	47.2	0	3605.7
IcyTouch	121495235	1.7	44625	65.3	34.7	0	2722.6
Horn	0	0	25111	100	0	0	0
DPS 7810
Total Damage 7028.95m in 250h
Threat Per Second 3954
Generated in 595s
Template: Unholy 15-0-56
Priority: Unholy
Presence: Blood
Sigil: Virulence
RuneEnchant: FallenCrusader
Pet Calculation: True

The 2/2 Epidemic build was significantly worse than either of these two, so I won't bother to include it.

So, after correcting my embarrassing Reaping error, my results seem to match what Consider got, that 1/2 Epidemic was a small dps gain over NoEpidemic, as long as you pull it from BA and not DC. Also, I still contend that in 16-0-55, BC should be maxed out over BA.

Just did the sims on my own:

Rotation: PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-DC-DC

1. 16-0-55 (4/5 BA - 5/5 DC) - 7832 dps

2. 16-0-55 (5/5 BA - 4/5 DC) - 7834 dps

Priority: BB-FF-DCMaxRP-SS-BS-DC

3. 15-0-56 (3/5 BA - 5/5 DC) - 7877 dps

4. 15-0-56 (5/5 BA - 3/5 DC) - 7885 dps

Conclusions:

- You are right with Epidemic, but you will lose EP for about 0.5 seconds on the Mob. Resulting in appr. 2.5% Caster-dps-loss, if you are the only one with 13% Spell-Debuff. When doing AoE you lose 2 Seconds on every Mob or having some weird Rotation to do, resulting in a dps loss.

- You are wrong with BA and DC.


Do you smooth your results? My overall numbers are usually higher, when smoothing. But the differences remain the same.

--------------------------

Edit:

Results without smoothing:

1. 7762dps
2. 7762dps
3. 7812dps
4. 7816dps

All those sims are without 4p t9. I've been assuming with it, which was where I got my DC > BA comment from. Judging by your earlier sims on this page, it seems you did not, which would be the point of difference.

DC obviously benefits much more from 4p t9 than BA.

As well, 4p t9 is potent enough to play a role in the whole 16/0/55 or 15/0/56 thing - likely increasing the value of the former in relation to the latter, making that already small gap even more minor.

Besides, even if 1/2 Epidemic did do slightly more dps (despite 4p t9) on a personal level, the lapse in EP would make it do far (far) less dps in terms of the raid as a whole (especially on AoE, but also on single target, pending your raid composition - whether or not you have CoE/EM and how many DKs you have benefiting from the disease debuff). That alone is enough to discard it as an option.

You can't dump runic power with SS. Two runes with one strike is irrelevant. The SS glyph is not worth it. SS is not that strong. You disagree with stuff you haven't even read. Everything has been discussed in great detail.

Long time reader but first time posting...I'm not sure if I'm on to something or on something, but I'm sure you'll let me know. I read through most of this thread and I don't believe this has been covered yet.

From looking at the stat weights for crit rating and agility. Why isn't agility more important? It's my understanding that the only benefit we get from crit rating is a higher percentage crit chance. Considering that agility does the same thing only more efficiently, it seems like the weight of agility should be revisited.

Here's my numbers (sorry no fancy wall of sims, I'm old school):

All I did was swap out some items back and forth and look at my character screen to see how the numbers changed (I was very careful to use only items w/ crit or agility and no other stat benefits).

100 crit rating gives me about 2.17% greater crit chance
100 agility gives me about 15.1% greater crit chance (and armor to boot for more attack power from bladed armor!)
That means agility gives almost 7 times more crit chance than crit rating

Would you still put crit rating stat weight at 2.1 w/ 4piece and 1.6 w/o compared to 1.05 agility?

Is your number there for agility correct? 7 agility for 1% crit seems very wrong, even at level 60 it was around 20 agility for paladins and warriors. Also one of the main reasons for crit raiting to be better than agility is due to the spell crit you get on death coil (and icy touch I think) as it works off of spell crit, and agility only adds to melee crit chance.

Edit: According to a quick gear swapping exercise I calculated that 61 agility is required for 1% increase to melee critical strike chance.

Horn of winter adds like 3% melee crit, so this can't be right.

I'm not sure what you were looking at, but the 100 agi = 15.1% crit chance is off. I believe the numbers should be 62.5 agi per 1% crit and like 42.5 crit rating per 1% crit. (That's per wowwiki, which while may not be 100% accurate, it is much closer than 1 agi = 1.51% crit).

So, it takes about, what, 47% more agility per 1% crit than crit rating? Looks to me like the point valuations are at least somewhat in line with what they should be.

I don't follow your argument. What exactly are you proposing when you say "SS spam with a larger GCD"? Your comments are confusing, I cannot understand what spec or rotation you are advocating as being superior.

I think my last post was erased, SS is a little bit ahead from BS and have more crit:

Originally Posted by Leg
I don’t agree! It is far better dump RP with SS. Reasons:
- SS have more critical and a critical bonus.
- 2 runes with one strike + Dirge .
So I am doing between 51-56% of critical with SS, 30s of RGCD with GoSS and using 2 Epidemic, 3 Reaping, 0 Necrosis (16/0/55) and BP.
3 points in reaping gives at least more 2 SS per 30s so is better than Necrosis.

Ok I apologize, I realize what I did wrong. I was calculating the agility numbers based on no wep equipped and wep equipped w/ agility stats and that threw everything off.

I ran my numbers again w/o this obvious error but the numbers still support my argument.

Horn of winter (or 155 agility) give me exactly 3.36% crit chance
155 crit rating gives me 2.48 % crit chance

That still seems like agility would be the superior stat. Anyone else finding different numbers than those? I know I now seem much less credible due to my ludicrious numbers posted above...but check for yourself. What do you guys think?

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis


Live data from ToGC 25 Northern Beasts last night. Well, mostly just Gormok dieing and us wiping on worms 11 times.

17/0/54

Cast sequence macro:
PS>IT>SS>BS>BS>DC>DC

Log lists pets seperatly. Has me around ~6300 w/out pet...asumming pet is ~15% of dmg, that's another ~945 dps so about 7245 w/ ghoul included. Everytime I popped AoTD I'd get over 8k dps for Gormok. No BL/Heroism.

The rotation is so frigging tight, I was very sekptical about going into bone shield or gargoyle, as I'm not used to to switching off of a cast sequence macro to cast something in the middle or in it's stead. It's just me getting used to a new rotation.

I think the most revealing thing is how much RP revitalize gave me. It's hawt.

Also, the log wasn't taken by me, and I went on to do ToC 10man in another raid from the log parser.

I hope this helps.

I also wanted to point out that armory has me in different legs. I switched to t8.5 legs for more haste(just haven't changed it in equip mgr. yet) My haste was around 364 total, versus the 308 armory as me in atm.

Crit rating is far superior to agility, and most of the numbers in the last few posts are off.

Horn of Winter (155 Agility) gives me 2.48% crit. This is 62.5 Agility per 1% crit. This matches the number given on WoWWiki.

I removed my Wrathstone to check Crit Rating. I lose 2.36% crit when removing the trinket, which is 108 Crit Rating, which is 45.8 Crit Rating for 1% crit. This is close to the rating given by WoWWiki which is 45.91.

Finally, Agility does not apply to Spell Crit, while Crit Rating does.

155 agility gives me exactly 2,48% melee crit chance. Where 155 crit rating gives me 3,37% melee and spell crit chance.

Seems to me you have mixed the numbers. And my numbers matches with WoWWiki aswell. 155/62,5 = 2,48 and 155/45,91 = 3,376

I'm getting 2.48% crit chance increase from Horn of Winter, and showing 45.8 crit rating being 1% crit, exactly like Alatyr.

I think you're doing your numbers wrong.

yah I'm doing my numbers wrong, will chalk that up to on something...even if my numbers were right the very fact that agility doesn't help coil crit more often negates any small advantage due to how much of the total dmg coils account for w/ unholy dps in 3.2.2.

Thanks guys!

It seemed like no one was interested in switching subversion for ghoul frenzy and epidemic when I posted it, but for what it's worth I ran the sim and found it to be within ~2.5% of the top unholy DW build used in bensch's sims, using the stats he posted. However, the strike numbers didn't seem to match up quite right, so I'd appreciate it if someone else could confirm/deny.

I used:
Bensch's stats as posted in the post a couple pages back comparing DW builds to the best 2h build.
rotation of:
PS IT SS BS BB DC DC
GF IT SS BS BB DC DC
PS IT SS BS BB DC DC
(make sure Ghoul Frenzy is on =retry 0 or else it won't work right)

The only talent changes from Dual Wield build C were moving the points from subversion into Epidemic and GF.

It was about a 2.5% dps decrease on a single target, but it allows your ghoul to be healed, constantly, and with epidemic is marginally better for aoe, in theory. It seems like a viable alternative for the people who love GF/Epi.

2.5% dps decrease for your ghoul really isn't worth it in CC. What fights does your pet ever die on? Beasts? The only thing which can kill it there is if you let it stand in poison. Jaraxxus? The only thing which can kill it there is if you let it stand in flames. FC? Nothing, really. Twins? Your ghoul is immune (or takes almost no damage from) stuff like Vortex, so it's fine. Anub? Nothing, again.

2.5% dps decrease as well as a loss in threat reduction seems silly to me when all you gain is some (unnecessary) surviviability for your pet. If you want to go for it, by all means, but it certainly isn't optimal. Hence why GF is still listed as one of those optional talents ^^.

Leg, I'm not sure where you're going. My HM Jaraxxus parse from the other night: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay . That's a fight with no damage modifiers (like Beasts or XT), a fight without constant AoE (like many), etc. Nothing to influence the average SS/BS. My average SS was 6k. My average BS was 3280. That's pretty much in line with the sim's results (SS is a tad bit on the low side, but the crit rate is where it should be, pretty much, so whatever). Two BStrikes are ahead of one SS. The sim shows it. Actual parses show it. Not sure why you are seemingly in denial.

If they both do the same amount of damage, roughly (with BS actually doing more, but whatever), and both generate the same amount of RP (which they do), except one takes 3 talent points to allow you to substitute it for the other... obviously that talent isn't going to be worth it.

I am really not liking the new Bone Shield. It's to the point where I am considering leaving it behind to finish Bladed Armor and get the 1xBS/BB per minute back.

Edit - I guess even swinging that extra BS wouldn't help either way, though in AoE the BB should be worth the GCD provided enough targets.