Eventually: By the way, as worldoflogs isn't showing the highest crits etc. What was your megauberallprocson-crit with SS?

Max shadow portion crit = 14,309
Max physical crit = 6,554

It will be interesting to see how they change scourge strike, im leaning towards upping the physical portion, it has a much more reliable crit rate compared to relying on spell crit, I remember parses where I managed to get 15% death coil crit rates, nobody likes bad rng

You seem to spec into epidmic and drop GoSS for GoD, and i've been trying to work out the rotation useing pest after first 20 sec rotation but can't get it down maybe you were using a different one than me. The rotation seem'd really really tight, and sometimes screwing it all up which drops numbers. if you dont mind which rotation did you factor into the Sim?

I did some limited testing and it was consistent with your findings, at lower gear levels, albeit I discovered the Glyph of IT which boosts frost fever is not working in the sim v1.1.7.2 (reported it, Afabar will be fixing).

I used a priority, as I said, of BP>FF>SS>BS>DC. It roughly works out (after initial diseases up) to SS - SS - BS - Pest - DC -- SS - SS - SS - DC - DC. Due to additional RP from butchery, blood tap, boneshield, etc you'll occtionally have an extra DC. Personally I've never been a fan of a strict rotation because when it gets screwed up you need to decide how to restart it. Priorities tell you I want my diseases up so if they aren't I know I want to fix that. Then I want to SS if I have the frost and unholy runes. If not I'll use blood runes to pest and BS.

As for the GoIT are you sure you were using it properly? I change IcyTouch in the glyph section to IcyTouchII in order to get the proper glyph. It showed results consistant with what I would expect changing GoDD out for GoIT, a slight DPS loss.

Kithus, did you do a standard sim with a set number of hours? The reason I ask is I seem to remember discussion that GoD might be overvalued on a long sim due to the infinite disease rolling, where as on a real fight you aren't going to get that benefit for near as long.

Have you considered doing any testing on the "multiple fights of length X" method in the sim? I'm worried that we might be giving far too much value to GoD due to Sim vs. real world issues.

Yeah, I don't believe GoD can be resisted any longer (unfortunately ><. Considering how much I detest the glyph, it takes a lot for me to say this).

The fact that 1 SS will be greater than one PS + one IT + one BS means that even if you ignore increased disease damage, the glyph will be a dps boost. Then when you account for the fact that diseases won't clip... it becomes competitive. Toss in disease rolling, and it becomes superior.

But, yes, after a lot of running of the sim, I can definitely confirm such results, regardless of fight length, gear level, set bonuses, or any such things.

GoIT will still have its place - in any fight with more than a single mob for more than a fraction of a second, it will pull ahead of GoDD. The only fights in WotLK I can think of where it wouldn't would be Hodir and General in Ulduar. None in CC. Patchwerk and such in Naxx. The only time you'll really use GoDD will be Patchwerk-esqe fights (which Festergut more or less is, for melee).

At any rate, I'll update the OP later this evening, and try to generate some appropriate stat weights to throw up.

That's a bit misleading, in my opinion. Yes in every fight with multiple mobs GoIT will be more DPS on the meter. The question is more will it be more DPS where it matters? Let's just go with ToC because, quite frankly, its the only tier that matters right now:

1a. Gormok - GoIT edges ahead while snobolds are up but isn't as solid when you're down to just gormok, its a wash.
1b. Jormungar - GoIT wins if the worms are close enough together for you to pest effectively
1c. Icehowl - Single target and you can build up RP for when he's stunned

2. Jarraxxus - GoIT wins out here with adds but considering the amount of time you have just jarraxxus up its not by much

3. Faction champions - This really depends on how you do the fight. For my raid GoIT is a solid loser because we CC some targets and pestilence will break that CC. If you aren't CCing anything then GoIT is an obvious winner here

4. Twins - GoIT wins on the meters but GoDD provides more burst for shattering the pact shield

5. Anub - GoIT wins for the first 70% of the fight and overall but GoDD provides the superior damage for the final 30%


Its very likely going to come down to a matter of personal choice. GoIT is very likely going to improve your spot on recount on most fights. However, it doesn't always necessarily get the boss down faster. Overall I think the two glyphs are very well balanced against eachother and both have their place. A lot will come down to what Icecrown fights look like. A lot of multi boss or add filled fights will favor GoIT, while a majority if single target fights will favor GoDD.

As for GoDisease I totally agree with you about being leery about relying on it. Not because I dislike the glyph for any reason but because I think its going to be deemed overpowered like the old GoIT. Its overall affect just seems too good to be true and it completely dwarfs the GoSS in an unholy build that focuses on SS. That strikes me as poor design and makes me worry about the future of GoD. That's just idle speculation on my part though.

It obviously depends heavily on the type of fights present in ICC, of course. Completely agree with you there.

But using CC as an example is heavily for GoIT. None of the extra dps is on stuff which wouldn't need to be dpsed down anyways, so nothing is wasted. Everything you said favors GoIT, the only exception being if you really (really) struggle on shields in Twins.

Algalon would be a better argument for GoIT winning the meters but losing where it counts (so to speak). Or Ignis, perhaps. Any fight with adds which you don't need to kill (via dps, at any rate) or where it isn't your job to kill them (although, even then, losing 0.05% of your dps on the primary target for extra damage on the secondary targets is probably worth it).

At any rate, the largest step towards phasing GoD out (on single target fights) isn't necessarily to directly nerf it, but to make disease ticks calculate on tick, not on application. That still might not be enough, of course, but it would remedy the most annoying aspect of the glyph. Although, yes, most of the time all your trinket procs and such will coincide (due to similar/identical durations and icds), what if one doesn't? Or what about the new sigil? Frustrating, to be sure, I'll bet.

Double check this in case I'm checking the wrong box somewhere but I'm getting GoIT II being a small upgrade over Glyph of the Ghoul with that 15/0/56 GoD spec.

It also bothers me that this spec with my current gear is showing me breaking 9k which is about 2k more than I run at now. Is this right? Is new Scourge Strike that good?

The current version of the sim is somewhat overestimating the damage of Scourge Strike (or so I believe, judging by the 14k-15k average SS damage it's showing. Haven't yet been able to figure out where it's going wrong - if it even is). Regardless, the upcoming patch is a (single target) dps gain, simply not of the 2000 dps/near 30% magnitude.

GoIT probably is superior to GotG. The reason why sacrificing GotG was not considered (and usually hasn't been considered in the present, despite being slightly inferior to GoDD currently) was (is) due to the survivability aspect of it - the rather solid chunk of health lets your ghoul survive stuff (Shock Blast on Mimiron, for instance) which it otherwise wouldn't, and a pet death is a huge dps loss. That, and the gap between it and the alternatives is quite small.

With the buff to Night of the Dead, however, this might no longer matter - especially if the ICC fights are pet friendly.

The more I think about it, you're probably right. Which would make GoIT/GoD/GoDD standard for single target, and GoIT/GoD/GoDnD standard for AoE. It will also slightly impact the value of str (although post-hit cap it will still be the best stat to gem, no question) and the value of haste (which has already plummeted).

Edit: Some preliminary stat weights for 15/0/56 with GoD. I used the same stats shown above, except I turned on Deaths Choice and its heroic counterpart:

AttackPower	1
Strength	2.96
Agility	1.74
CritRating	2.38
HasteRating	0.49
ArmorPenetrationRating	2.03
ExpertiseRating	2.49
BeforeMeleeHitCap<8%	7.48
SpellHitRating	1.17
WeaponDPS	7.68
WeaponSpeed	362.32
2T9	84.06
4T9	456.52
2T10	521.74
4T10	434.78

Value of haste rating seems a bit too low, and the value of hit seems way high. Those aside, all seems logical enough. Agi/crit are somewhat higher then I would expect, but I'm probably not giving SS double dipping into it enough credit, especially when you consider it double dips into agi/crit, but only dips once into stats like Str/ArP/WeaponDps/etc.

Edit 2: Generating a combat log and looking through it, the SS numbers all appear pretty accurate, actually. 14k average s still seem a bit high, but the combat log is right, so no cause to doubt it. SS being over a third of our damage should please some people, I'm sure.

Don't forget Wandering plague! A stronger FF leads to more WP damages.

On Faction champions WP will hit every non-cc'd mobs (even if you don't pest).
On Twins WP procs from the non-shielded mob will hit the shield (helping to bring it down).
On Anub.. Adds continue to spawn during the last 30% on heroic mode (and it's the only mode that matters anyway)



Since we are discussing about Glyphs, was there any hint of a change to Glyph of Unholy Blight? Or will it just be twice as bad as it already was (with the nerf of UB)?

It's (currently) the same as it was - 40% - so, yes, it's twice as bad. Not even a 0.4% boost to your overall damage. Kinda horrid. Would be nice if they changed it somehow (not simply make it stronger, but make it so it isn't the same as GoDD, simply weaker - or even stronger).

GoSS is actually better than it now.

Im just wondering if there is a trinket analysis anywhere? Or what the forumla is for trinket analysis. Is it (time up / cool down) X ep values? Or how does that work?

Clearly dual death verdicts are BIS, or would greatness be greater than the lower DV? Was just wondering if there was a list or an equation for trinkets! Thanks

At first eval for DW UH I would think it would go: H-DV , Greatness , DV, Comets Trail, Wrathstone?

Interesting. The relative damage break down of the skills is probably well worth looking at as well.

Part of the high value of hit is probably due to large dps loss if you miss a pestilence. With a 21 second duration on diseases, and a 10 second rune cycle, you're refreshing within 1 gcd of the diseases expiring, So I'm pretty sure you have to reapply diseases if you miss. At the melee hit cap you'll only miss on about 1% of spells, below that, it'll get steadily worse. I'm not sure what delta the sim uses for hit rating but it's quite likely that it could result in a 3-5% chance of missing a pestilence. Depending on how it actually handles it, missing a death rune scourge strike could also have the same effect as it can push the refresh timer out. Without double Death's choice procs the disease damage could be quite a lot less. Without the low chance 2T9 bonus, you're probably going to max diseases in the sim within 20 seconds, but a there's not a lot of chance you'll actually manage to do that later on.

In practice, hit rating is pretty easy to come by, so that's not likely to be a major issue, although running with the spell hit debuff could be annoying (One nice advantage of dual-wield, is that hit is still useful past the cap). From experience, the movement requirements and target switching of modern fights can however make it quite hard to manage refreshing the diseases though. At least the new bone shield will free up a blood tap.

Because haste rating affects proc chances, there's a fair bit of randomness in the EP values for it.

ArPen looks like the third best stat, and is reasonably easy to come by, its EP should also increase as you stack it. I'd like to see what its value at a pretty easy to achive static value would be.

@Stealthah: What makes you think Greatness would be better than DV? Even though DMC:G's static 90 str is slightly more than DV's static AP, the proc has it beat by 150 str, and they have the same proc rate and ICD.

Actually all that was really relevant was that it was double proc trinkets and while they were pretty much guaranteed to be synced and up at the start of the fight, there's actually only a 30% or chance or so for each trinket to be up at a random time if you're forced to refresh diseases. The sim tries to maximise the AP of the diseases, so if both drop off it might end up reapplying the diseases 4-5 times before it actually gets optimal ones, You'd have to check the logs or damage output from running a low hit sim to confirm.

With SS double dipping from talents and crit percentage to the large extent it does crit rating (and agility) will super scale like ArPen. I don't think it'll ever get to the point where they'd be more valuable than strength, but it might be possible that say an updated Mjolnir Runestone could compete with the DC trinkets.

The big downside to stacking ArPen and over stacking crit is that SS is a single target spell. What happens in true AE situations? (reaping has no benefit in these cases either)

Over the course of a 100 H sim, it only did PS + IT 4 times each. It's gotten much more intelligent about that sort of thing.

But, the thing is, even without the increase in disease damage via rolling, GoD is superior to the alternatives, simply because 1 SS > 1 PS + 1 IT + 1 BS (especially in any fight where you can make use of the additional GCD, or any fight with multiple mobs, of course). Increased disease damage is icing on the cake. So even if your trinkets don't sync, even if your trinket procs aren't that great, any of that - you still come out ahead. It's just a matter of how far ahead.

Or such is what my math and simming has shown me.

As to crit/arp, it will be interesting. A lot of it depends on ICC itemization, which is still a big question mark.

Now that the mechanics of the ability have settled down and the numbers are flowing, has anyone tested the new Scourge Strike on a resilience heavy target? Both light and heavy on the armour range?

It would be interesting to see how these 15k Scourge Strikes from PvE transition over to PvP.

This is what I'm getting for my sim

AttackPower	1
Strength	2.89
Agility	1.73
CritRating	2.3
HasteRating	1.08
ArmorPenetrationRating	2.03
ExpertiseRating	2.24
BeforeMeleeHitCap<8%	5.86
SpellHitRating	7.12
WeaponDPS	7.57
WeaponSpeed	486.49

The spell hit seemed pretty ridiculous till I realized it was probably due to Pest.

It's kind of bothering me that there are several dozen applications of IT and PS in my sim but I assume that rotation timing is doing something weird so they're rarely falling off.

Spell hit rating can't be higher than pre melee hit cap rating. It just isn't logically possible. Anything which increases the value of spell hit rating (such as pest) will also increase the value of pre melee hit cap rating, as the latter does what spell hit rating does (and more).

That aside, your numbers are all within 10% of mine (hit aside, but that's already mentioned, and haste aside, but I know mine can't be right - although yours still seems somewhat low as well. Most likely something the sim is doing/calculating incorrectly).

@ ShinKosh, This really isn't the best place to discuss PvP specific info, as that does have its appropriate forum and subsequent thread: [Deathknight] PvP Thread .

That said, it's simple enough to take your average SS based in your PvP gear, multiply it by whatever you consider the average resilience value, and then multiply by different armor values. It doesn't double dip into resilience (and obviously not into armor), so there's nothing complex about the math.

I understand what you’re saying Consider and I wasn't trying to derail the thread into some god-awful PvP fueled E-rage like a lot of PvP topic end up like, merely hoping for a few numbers for the newer Strike and its mechanics. A few days ago there was 2 pages of 'concern' about the 3.3 SS when faced with a PvP geared target and in light of faulty game mechanics at the time the topic was dropped.

I'll post up on the PvP thread and see if anyone over there has some PTR numbers, it's just they are still talking about heathens ways like Frost and Blood.

If by any chance anyone happens to accidently swing a two hander into their PvP geared mate, it would be interesting to see how Unholy will fair for 3.3 PvP.