Something that's been on my mind of late is the lack of discussion on movement and how it relates to the currnet specs in the OP. I realize that this is very hard (impossible?) to quantify, but it is a factor that many encounters have that a simulator can't account for. The Enhancement Sim thread is trying to figure out a way to account for movement by using a range mod in conjunction with some agreed upon figures to analyze how much of a factor being out of range of a Boss has on various encounters.

My question is, do you guys think that the current -epidemic -reaping builds benefit from or are hurt by encounters that require you to run back into range versus a rotaion that has more free globals, like the old 12-0-59 spec.

I know this was just an OT rant, but is it really that much of a problem that by not using death runes you gain a whopping 1% in damage? (Or same for not having epidemic) Sure the "traditional" Unholy spec works just fine, but of course the EJ/Simulation community shows it to be a 1.1% dps loss (~ 100/9000 dps)

Now that being said, if Bone Shield was broken and the tank was exploding... that would be an issue.


In the end the big outlier that keeps messing up Unholy spec is RP generation. Whenever you can game the situation to produce more RP (see Revitalize/IT Glyph and before with Dirge/Oblit) then it makes normal FU strikes not quite as valuable as DC spammage.

The current Unholy builds are less effected by having to run from fire, since the rotation is only 10 seconds compared to the old 20 seconds.

I think Vank means that the epidemic builds have an advantage while moving because their diseases stay up longer, as opposed to non epidemic builds, where diseases fall off much earlier. He is correct in that this is a disadvantage for non epidemic builds, how large of one is the question.

Bensch is absolutely right.

Yes, Epidemic builds have the possibility of having more time left on diseases when you are interrupted. However, they also have the possibility of having less time left on diseases when you are interrupted. With a non Epidemic build, even if you are interrupted at the very end of your rotation, you'll still have two ticks left on both of your diseases.

Diseases lasting 40% longer < Diseases being refreshed 100% more often

All in all, the new build wins out in movement. You are more likely to have more time left on diseases, as shown above. You can do more damage at ranged if you are stuck there for an extended peroid of time, thanks to the IT glyph. You are less likely to get screwed out of the important part of your rotation since it isn't backloaded (as Epidemic/Reaping ones are), but instead just more evenly spread. You can still do your hardest hitting ability - DC - at ranged, while the hardest hitting ability of Epidemic/Reaping was Obliterate and now would be SS.

Nope. Nothing documented in the notes, anyways, and nothing which I see mentioned on the Druid/Priest boards.

Nope. You have to remember that despite the fact that haste has such a high value for us, it has a softcap. That proc - if it even affected spell gcds which, if it didn't, would kill its value anyways - would be enough to push you over that softcap. Once over that softcap, haste goes down to the IUP statweight (approximately).

And, besides, CSD/RED are just amazing.

I just got 4PCT9 today, and I must say, it is the single factor that makes this epidemic-less/reaping-less build(s) shine. However, perhaps I can achieve ever greater results than what I have now?

My order of most damaging abilities was something like this:
1) Melee
2) Frost Fever
3) Blood Plague


Shouldn't it be:
1) Melee
2) DC
3) SS

Perhaps my diseases are critting so much that the SS and DC just won't be able to outdo them? This is for ToGC10 Beasts and Jaraxxus.

It all depends. On a patchwerk-esqe fight, yes, it should be your autoattack, followed by your deathcoil, then either blood strike or scourge strike (the two should be extremely close, so it's a matter of rng). However, most fights are not like patchwerk, so it definitely varies, and simply because it varies doesn't necessarily mean you are doing something wrong.

You say that was on Beasts and Jaraxxus? On Beasts, there is a moderate amount of time in p2 (burrows) and p3 (frozen/knock back/stuns) where you aren't going to be attacking, but diseases are still ticking, so it seems quite possible/logical that FF/BP are going to perform better relative to other abilities. On Jaraxxus you should be pesting adds, which is going to inflate disease damage.

Nothing to worry about.

Hell, here's one of my partial parses from a hm twin valk wipe this past week (we wiped... 15 times? After... one pulling it last week? So bad. Sigh at core healers being on vacation): WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay. Wandering Plague, of all abilities, is my second highest source of damage. That's obviously not what you're going to see on most fights, even AoE fights, but it's normal so far as Valks goes. 25k max WP, hehe. WP interaction on that fight is hilarious, although I don't know why it works how it does.

Or the current highest normal twin valk parse: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay. Gazel had a 30k max WP. Quite amusing.

I don't have any specific data on the twins, but in general, buffs to you don't affect your ghoul/garg unless the buff is increased strength or attack speed. So no, I don't think pets are affected by essence or surge.

However, I suspect that one of the reasons Wandering Plague dmg is so high on that fight is because it's probably hitting for fully buffed dmg against the secondary target, similar to the rogue's Blade Flurry. For example, if you have dark essence attacking the light boss, your wandering plague ticks on the light boss are wandering to the dark boss and hitting it at the same "full dmg + essence buff" value.

As far as the WP behavior goes, I believe you just got lucky with a WP proc on a disease crit, which made the disease basically deal 400% damage, plus the twin valk Power Up buff.

You get those big WP numbers because:

You are hitting a shielded target with different platform, the shield takes huge extra damage for everything you do (i guess its like 500%); you get 25k absorb on that shield, but it procs 25k damage on the other target. These numbers don't basically have anything to do with that empowered buff. Empowered buff is just a mild damage buff if you compare it to the damage buff you get for the shield if you have a platform of opposite colour.

Pets are not affected by the light/dark buffs/debuffs on Twins. Completely sure. They're also not affected by light/dark vortex, thankfully.

True Gugraali, that would help to explain the reason WP does high overall damage, but not the reason why it does absurdly high max damage on that fight. Even if it's ticking the second mob for the same value as it ticks on your primary mob (which I honestly have no clue if it does or not), and even if WMO were to count the damage it did to the primary target and the secondary target into one number (which I am 95% sure it does not), that wouldn't be enough to account for a 30k max hit. That means that you would have had to do 15k on each target. The max disease ticks are 10k. Doesn't add up.

Which is why you're off, Khaos. Your max WP tick shouldn't exceed your max disease tick in normal circumstances (aside from the fact that WP will hit multiple targets). That's simply how WP works - it deals 100% of the damage of the disease tick off of which it procced. Thus if your disease crit did 200% of your normal disease damage, the WP crit is going to do 200% of your normal disease damage - not 400%.

The only real explanation is WP double dips from something on that fight, although it's odd that nothing else does.

Edit: Actually, looking at it, Necrosis is double dipping from something as well. Max Necrosis was about 13k while the max melee was about 22k. Obviously that's not 20% of the other =p.

Curious, curious.

Huh? The shield the mobs put on themselves? The shield doesn't take extra damage from everything you do. It doesn't take extra damage from anything you do (aside from the extra damage you would normally do to a mob of the opposite color). Not sure where you got that from, but I am pretty positive you are completely wrong.

Even were you right (which, I say again, I am like 99.99% sure you are not), that wouldn't explain the Necrosis/Melee discrepancy.