Hey Consider,

Any possibility of having the DW BiS set added to the OP?

The gearing choices are pretty much the same, so just showing a gear set with 1 or 2 items different doesn't seem worth doing.

Is it just a straight switch of the 2h weapon to Remorseless x2?

I was playing around with the new 2H Blood Presence Unholy build last night in Ulduar and ToC25, and even with my current haste rating, it performed extremely well. However I have a question.

In my raids, We reliably have a Boomkin or Warlock that provides the +13% magic damage buff which Ebon Plague provides. This, coupled with the fact that the new Bone Shield is bulky and annoying to use every minute, made me wonder the merits of a 10-10-51 spec, grabbing everything else but skipping those two talents. It would look like this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...g,QFpeO3,10505

Following a normal rotation of IT PS SS BS BS DC DC repeat.

Losses would be 8% crit and 2% damage with a 2H weapon.

But you would gain:

- a slightly larger RP pool, which is relatively meh on nearly all fights and you could perhaps slightly benefit more from 2/5 toughness

- a 10% boost to diseases, scourge strike, death coils, icy touch, necrosis, bcb, WP and a few more things.
( Basically it buffs everything but the ghoul and melee strikes by 10%.)

Assuming that all of that added together is roughly 60%ish of your DPS (a low estimate) then that makes Black Ice a 6% DPS increase give or take, which significantly benefits from raid buffs, definitely more then 8% crit and 2% Weapon damage increase.

I'm currently at work, so my boss would have a fit if I downloaded a simulator, but if someone wants to test this it would be greatly appreciated.

Correction: Crypt fever increases disease damage done by 30%, Ebon Plague does that, and increases magic damage done by 13%. So it is not nerfing disease damage to skip it as long as you pick up Crypt Fever.

Khaos, Ebon Plague is a disease whereas Crypt Fever is not. You'd need at least one point in Ebon Plaguebringer.

Ahh, I didn't realize that. Okay then, change the spec to:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...d,QFpeO3,10505

dropping a point from BA to put into EP, but keeping it at only 1/3 so we can still get most of BA and all of Dark Ice.


Are you 100% sure that CF doesn't count as a disease towards your disease counts for SS?


Edit: and even if it doesn't, is the extra damage from SS going to outweigh the extra damage from maxxing out BA?

Doing some napkin math, my average SS crits for anywhere between 6 and 8k, so lets go with 7k. Minus one disease of 10%, you're looking at a 6450 or so SS instead of a 7k (give or take) versus 1 extra AP for every 180 Armor. On my armory, I have 14342 Armor in my DPS gear. which with 5/5 BA gives me 398 AP, or with 4/5 will give me 314 AP. So the question is: Is 500 - 800 damage every 10 seconds an equal gain to =~90 AP (Which increases damage done with everything, including Diseases and Scourge strike). Keep in mind that that 90AP gets decidedly bigger with raid buffs like trueshot aura and whatnot. My guess is that it's less then a 1% difference, as, with only white damage, 90 AP is a 7 DPS increase for white damage, when added to the DPS changes to all your other abilities, the gap is probably negligible or perhaps 90AP even pulls ahead.

Keep in mind that Black Ice also benefits towards SS, so they really are interchangable.

True enough, and the build is still being worked on. As I'm still at work for another hour, I can't test anything, but I'm thinking about changing out a few points in BA for 2H spec, but I'm still not so sure about wasting 3 points to get 3% crit from EP, since it basically does the same thing as twelve other class buffs aside from the 3% crit. Perhaps they could be better spent like this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...R,QFpeO3,10505

which would lose 180AP but gain 2% Melee, Scourge Strike, BS and PS damage.

I would only advise such a spec for situations where there is >1 Unholy DK in the raid. For fights like Anub which have a significant AoE/multitarget component (or even Jarraxxus), you'll want to have the 13% boost on as many targets as possible, as fast as possible and a lazerchicken/warlock just isn't going to be able to do that.

You say "wasting" points in EP, but Dark Conviction is a stronger talent than Bladed Armor once you pick up 4t9, and EP does the exact same thing. Even if you don't have 4t9, the difference either way is quite small, so I'd still take EP--barring other unholy DKs--as it is by far the best spell debuff. EP applies faster and lasts longer than Earth and Moon--E&M lasts 12s and has cast+travel time before it goes up, while EP goes up less than a second after IT/PS is cast and lasts 15s; E&M often falls off on, say, Jaraxxus, while adds are up (though when I'm that moonkin, I try to reapply it, there can still be a few seconds of downtime). Also, EP will be on all mobs in an AoE pack, and though tab+casting is possible as a moonkin, it's very annoying, and really only feasible on very small numbers of adds (Anub). CoE is not really even worth of consideration compared to E&M and EP since it is a nontrivial dps loss for the lock.

I have a question i was hoping that someone could help me answer. When i run the sim with my values, i keep getting banner of victory as approx 45 dps over mirror of truth (even more over Bandits fot that matter). Since unholy values crit more than Arp and the procc on mirror and banner is pretty similar, im having a hard time understanding the rather big difference. In the sim, it seems like the crit numbers on different abilities is very similar, not even close to the 1,83% crit i loose when i drop mirror of truth.

Any help is appreciated.