Unholy Dps | 3.3.5, King of Anything - Page 46

zagor · 10/05/09, 2:58 AM

I haven't simulated short fights because that feature looks bugged atm. Strictly speaking I agree that GoD does have an advantage in simulator in one long sim. However I'm sure that with "many small fights" option it's still better than recasting diseases. Few weeks ago I did similar simulations as blood with GoD and "short fights option" and the
difference wasn't as big as one would expect. That's because setting the high AP diseases is easy and doesn't cost
much in itself (one diseaseless rune set or casting ps-it midfight for 5-proc diseases), while benefits are big.

Here I talk from my personal experience. I play as blood with GoD and I have experienced a noticable boost to overal dps by using it. In my current gear I have 5 procs to watch for: Fallen crusader, Banner of victory, Greatness, sigil, 2T9.

The argument that current boss fights are too short for GoD to show it's worth doesn't hold a great weight when you look at fights one by one and when you have some experience in using GoD. Even when rolling diseases with 2-3 procs out of 5 it should still be better than randomly having procs or not having procs when recasting diseases every 10sec. The bonus from 4T9 is so great that we just have to exploit it to the maximum, especially as unholy. It's not just bigger diseases ticks, but also more ticks because there's no clipping.

1. Beasts
- on Gormok rolling diseases with all procs whole time (my guild has ranged killing off snowbolds though)
- even on heroic there's a short break (depending on your dps) that allows at least 2 icds to line up
- then rolling diseases on Acidmaw, getting diseases with 2-3 procs is almost guarantied, if refreshed as he's about to submerge they will last until he's up again and can be refreshed
- again a break (depending on dps) for Icehowl so proc cds align for buffed diseases at start, watch his crash timer and refresh dots on time, depending if the charge is near you diseases can be refreshed in time again.
- basically for beasts diseases will drop only on Icehowl

2. Jaraxxus - this is easy, get all procs at start and keep rolling diseases. When portal/volcano spawns pestilence away and nuke portals, then pestilence all adds too

3. Faction champs - if needed can roll diseases whole time. Mostly it doesn't matter for heroic since we grip/chain.

4. Twins - twins tanked together, rolling max diseases whole time.

5. Anub - haven't done heroic, but on normal it's easy to get all procs at the pull and later after submerge.

Consider · 10/05/09, 3:11 AM

On Anub that only holds true if you don't dps scarabs during burrow phases. And if you don't, you aren't maximizing your dps/doing your job to your fullest to begin with =p.

The fact that Blood finds rolling diseases valuable while we don't can't be compared (and I suppose I'm partially to blame for even mentioning Blood/Frost). The difference for Blood between PS + IT and DS is larger than the difference for us between PS + IT and SS. In fact, the difference is pretty much gigantic - a few thousand as opposed to a few hundred. That's on top of the fact that we lose out on 5 RP by using a SS in place of a PS + IT. Blood doesn't. On the other hand, Blood does lose more by that blood rune, but it still doesn't quite cover the gap + rp.

What more is the fact that Blood doesn't have as strong a third glyph option as we do. Dropping GoDD (or GotG) is a larger loss for us than Blood dropping whatever glyph it drops to use GoD.

Besides, randomly looking at several of the top Blood dk parses on WMO (Ruuned, Espodk, etc. People from top 100 or 50 or whatever guilds), they don't even use GoD, which makes me question how big of a gain it is for that spec anyways. Wouldn't surprise me if many people overstated the glyph for them as well =/.

You just can't use what works for one spec as an explanation for justifying it working for another.

I'm not saying GoD isn't viable (although, personally, I don't think it is). What I am saying is that the 100 hour fights or whatever done by the simulator are not sufficient for judging its worth, for many, many reasons. What I am saying is that just because other specs like it, doesn't mean we should like it. What I am saying is that there has yet to be any parses from otherwise successful Unholy dks showing it's worth.

More math/parses/something substantial =/.

Edit: What one also has to remember is that half your diseases will benefit from trinket procs and the like anyways, as these things occur more than once per fight. The gap between disease damage with and without GoD actually isn't that huge, and is highly overstated.

I mean, looking at the sims, FF and BP both hit about ~300 harder with GoD as opposed to without without (slightly over that number for FF, slightly under for BP. Rounding to 300 for simplicity). That's a gain of 200 DPS. Not bad at first glance? It is. That 200 dps comes at the cost of a BS every 20 seconds, 5 RP ever 20 seconds, and either GoDD or GotG. It doesn't pan out, as simple math can show.

By the way, after setting the normal Epidemic build to a rotation (instead of a priority), it actually outperforms GoD, even over a 200H sim. Sure, the difference is only 3 dps, but still, 1) the gap is going to be larger on a five minute fight, and 2) 3 dps is 3 dps. Min maxing is min maxing!

Once again, I don't mean to come off as anti-GoD (although I'm obviously not a fan). But the more I look at it, the less viable it seems, and without something more concrete, there just doesn't seem enough to justify portraying it in the OP as equal to other specs - let alone superior.

zagor · 10/05/09, 3:26 AM

What you're saying is not wrong, but you're still dismissing the idea without giving it much thought. I'll try to get some napkin math to try and compare it while I'm at work.

However, this was not needed, trying to undermine my words by saying top blood parses don't use GoD doesn't mean anything as you should know, those parses depend on a lot of things.

Besides, randomly looking at several of the top Blood dk parses on WMO (Ruuned, Espodk, etc. People from top 100 or 50 or whatever guilds), they don't even use GoD.

Ryûuk · 10/05/09, 3:41 AM

Is UH presence really as good as the simulator is showing with 2/2 IUP if you are under a certain amount of haste? I've only got 87 haste at the moment (recovering from Blood) and when I run the simulator with Blood Presence it shows this DPS:

But when I run it in UH Presence I get:

Accidently posted this in the simulator thread, fixed now.

Consider · 10/05/09, 3:46 AM

Fair enough.

All I meant by that parse was that even for Blood, a spec in which many generally accept disease rolling as an easy decision, it isn't so clear cut, even if that did have an impact on Unholy's use of it.

On an unrelated note, using the aforementioned set rotation instead of the priority in the sim is showing Epidemic to be a -15 to +15 (depending on gear) dps loss/gain as compared to the regular spec/rotation on live. This is with GoUB in place of GoIT. Nothing that huge to note, as it's pretty much a dps wash, but when you factor in the AoE gain, one may as well spec it. Especially when you consider it also has the advantage of more GCDs (meaning it's easier to take advantage of AMS/Revitalize/Etc).

The reason this is just showing up now and why no one caught it before (I assume) is due to using a rotation as opposed to a priority for Epidemic. That's they key. The simulator is not human, and when you think about how it handles priority, it doesn't think, and probably does "PS - IT - SS - BS - BS - DCxwhatever - SS - SS - BS - BS - DCxwhatever - SS - PS - IT - BS - BS - DCxwhatever)", since diseases don't actually drop until after that last SS. This eventually leads to it doing that last BS - BS - DCxwhatever at a point when diseases aren't up. Then it will start back at the beginning, only to get back to that point once again. Hence why that priority is undervalued for 2/2 Epidemic.

Or so I believe, anyways. Seems logical, and would explain the damage difference between the two.

I'll edit the OP with the new spec and all of its implications (different rotation, stat weights, etc) tomorrow, most likely, unless someone disagrees/proves me wrong/what have you. Seems solid enough from my testing, however. Did it at multiple gear levels and the like.

____________________

Edit: To the above, yes, it's normal for UP to perform so well for you. There are three main reasons you're seeing such a gap;
1) Your haste is very low.
2) You lack 4p t9.
3) Your gear is generally weak, very weak.
Any one of those three is probably enough to make UP desirable for you. The fact that all three apply to you is why the gap is so large.

That said, there are a couple errors with your sims, however. One, you set the length much too low (I would do at least 50 hours, although generally speaking I do 250). Two, both specs used are the same name, which I assume means they're the same one. If you aren't running in UP, you really shouldn't spend points in IUP, and you'll gain 100ish dps from other talents. If you simply can't live without IUP, I suppose go for it, but eh. What fights in TotC/TotGC even require movement from melee? Stuff is pretty stand still (or run out for five seconds once per fight). Something like Anub chasing you, you can simply swap to UP, whether you are dpsing in it or not.

Ryûuk · 10/05/09, 4:12 AM

Originally Posted by Consider

Two, both specs used are the same name, which I assume means they're the same one. If you aren't running in UP, you really shouldn't spend points in IUP, and you'll gain 100ish dps from other talents.

The specs are the same name, but I just change the talents around depending on what spec I will be simulating it with, they are 2 different specs but have the same name. Also, thanks for the speedy reply, next week I should atain 4pc T9 (Yay!), When I do, should I change to BP?

zagor · 10/05/09, 4:52 AM

I'm not saying that GoD is the best unholy style of play, I'm trying to explore all posiblities, and since there was no talk of GoD I put those simulation results to try and get a discussion.

Here's what I got so far. This is all very unformal, and I hope mistakes-free.

How would GoD priority look like?

SS SS BS BS, SS SS BS Pest

There's 60RP from each rune set, and another 4+4 from Butchery.

It looks like we could get 1 DC in first rune set, and 2 DCs in 2nd rune set. That's 3 gcds empty per 20sec. Each 3rd empty gcd could be filled with HoW for 10RP (counting it as 3RP every 10sec).

Total for 2 rune sets (20sec): 4xSS, 3xBS, Pest, 134RP.

Standard short rotation: PS IT SS BS BS plus 15+20+20+10+10+4(butchery)

Total for 2 short rotations (20sec): 2xPS, 2xIT, 2xSS, 4xBS, 158RP

We can take that SS >= PS+IT. Using GoD gives bigger disease ticks and more ticks (no clipping) (how many more ticks? 2 more ticks every 10sec?)

Every 20sec it comes down to 1xBS + 24RP compared to bigger ticks, more ticks and two empty gcds.
edit: Also there will be an equivalent increase to Wandering plague damage.

I'm not sure how correctly I can quantify that, but I'll try.

If those 2 empty gcds stay empty we're loosing: BS + 24RP = 3200 + 24/40*6000 = 6800 damage.

How can we cover that with stronger diseases? If average disease tick jumped from 1900 to 2200 and we get 2 extra ticks, the net loss would be less than 1k or 50dps. Currently my blood disease ticks are over +400 in damage with all procs, that would be more for unholy in a perfect situation, and maybe the same with 2-3 procs?
This is very very unaccurate but an useful estimate. (I can't calculate true disease ticks (averagely there could be 3 procs up) without looking back at coeficients which I don't know, etc.). I am really not sure about these values. If the increase in disease values is lower, there's bigger gap to fill, but I also haven't considered Wandering plague. WP will have stronger ticks and again possibly more ticks (again because of no clipping).

If those 2 empty gcds can be filled even some of the time, then it's good dps gain. Soaking with AMS is an option here, together with resto druids feeding us RP (and priests?). Rejuvs at least are not questionable at all, every fight has aoe, and AMS can be used frequently too.

What I think this shows?

Rolling diseases with GoD gives us a free gcd every 10sec. If we can fill it then we receive a substantial dps gain, if we can't fill it, then we could experience a small dps loss, or dps gain, depending on how strong our rolling diseases are.
There's also a gain in aoe damage (because of epidemic, stronger diseases and stronger wandering plague).

Not a clear cut in any way, if I didn't make any mistakes. I hope somebody can better portray disease ticks and lost/gained ticks.

Bensch78 · 10/05/09, 6:54 AM

Originally Posted by Consider

Fair enough.

All I meant by that parse was that even for Blood, a spec in which many generally accept disease rolling as an easy decision, it isn't so clear cut, even if that did have an impact on Unholy's use of it.

On an unrelated note, using the aforementioned set rotation instead of the priority in the sim is showing Epidemic to be a -15 to +15 (depending on gear) dps loss/gain as compared to the regular spec/rotation on live. This is with GoUB in place of GoIT. Nothing that huge to note, as it's pretty much a dps wash, but when you factor in the AoE gain, one may as well spec it. Especially when you consider it also has the advantage of more GCDs (meaning it's easier to take advantage of AMS/Revitalize/Etc).

The reason this is just showing up now and why no one caught it before (I assume) is due to using a rotation as opposed to a priority for Epidemic. That's they key. The simulator is not human, and when you think about how it handles priority, it doesn't think, and probably does "PS - IT - SS - BS - BS - DCxwhatever - SS - SS - BS - BS - DCxwhatever - SS - PS - IT - BS - BS - DCxwhatever)", since diseases don't actually drop until after that last SS. This eventually leads to it doing that last BS - BS - DCxwhatever at a point when diseases aren't up. Then it will start back at the beginning, only to get back to that point once again. Hence why that priority is undervalued for 2/2 Epidemic.

Or so I believe, anyways. Seems logical, and would explain the damage difference between the two.

I'll edit the OP with the new spec and all of its implications (different rotation, stat weights, etc) tomorrow, most likely, unless someone disagrees/proves me wrong/what have you. Seems solid enough from my testing, however. Did it at multiple gear levels and the like.

____________________

Edit: To the above, yes, it's normal for UP to perform so well for you. There are three main reasons you're seeing such a gap;
1) Your haste is very low.
2) You lack 4p t9.
3) Your gear is generally weak, very weak.
Any one of those three is probably enough to make UP desirable for you. The fact that all three apply to you is why the gap is so large.

That said, there are a couple errors with your sims, however. One, you set the length much too low (I would do at least 50 hours, although generally speaking I do 250). Two, both specs used are the same name, which I assume means they're the same one. If you aren't running in UP, you really shouldn't spend points in IUP, and you'll gain 100ish dps from other talents. If you simply can't live without IUP, I suppose go for it, but eh. What fights in TotC/TotGC even require movement from melee? Stuff is pretty stand still (or run out for five seconds once per fight). Something like Anub chasing you, you can simply swap to UP, whether you are dpsing in it or not.

It would be very nice, if you could post the stats you used, when doing your sims. Otherwise it is quite inaccurate for me, to do the sims on my own.

Another sidenote:

Some Numbers without simming (as i don´t have Considers Numbers right now)

The difference between a SS and IT+PS in my sims is only 200 dmg. SS winning with this 200 dmg.

5 RP equals 1/8 DC which is 5900/8 = 740 dmg. PS + IT winning by 540dmg per 20 seconds. That´s 27 dps.

And don´t forget the 2 Talentpoints. That´s another 1.5% dps. (135 dps gain looking at 9000dps)

This would be an 162 dps gain in favor of PS+IT.

The only downside being disease-clipping, but i don´t have any problems getting my 7 GCD in a 10-second-timeframe on live actually with 200 haste-rating. Perhaps you should just do the sims with a lower latency again.

Last but not least, longer simulations do favor epidemic, as they actually favor GoD. Because the longer the fight, the more diseases you clip.

zagor · 10/05/09, 7:54 AM

Originally Posted by zagor

Every 20sec it comes down to 1xBS + 24RP compared to bigger ticks, more ticks and two empty gcds.

I forgot that in GoD build there's going to be an increase for Wandering plague (in size and in number of ticks). That together with what I wrote in earlier post should tip the scale for GoD even if both of these free cds stay unused. I edited the post above.

Nifty01 · 10/05/09, 8:52 AM

I think you are making some wrong assumptions in favor of GoD.

1. You will gain less than 2 extra ticks every 10sec with GoD. Even in a worst case scenario where you reaply diseases every time right before they tick you would gain less. 1 extra tick in average every 10 secs would be much more realistic. If your IT/PS exactly 10secs after you initially applied diseases the loss would be only 2/3 of a tick.

2. You lose GoDD which gives you 100+dps

3. There will not be any additional WP ticks, since both setups have 100% disease uptime.

4.Your max tick might be 400 above your min tick, but since you will randomly apply diseases with proccs up without GoD your average tick with GoD isnt going to be 400 above our average tick without GoD.

Milaz_ · 10/05/09, 10:00 AM

Like others I don't quite buy the GoD spec. I think lots of people got impressed buy the huge numbers from many hours sim and underestimate the loss in value of the glyph on short fights. I'm still running the version 1.1.2 of the simulator and the option for many x sec long fights works fine.

I used my character sheet (I have 4pc T9 ilvl245)

<Strength>1634</Strength>
<Agility>119</Agility>
<Intel>42</Intel>
<Armor>13668</Armor>
<AttackPower>413</AttackPower>
<HitRating>288</HitRating>
<CritRating>711</CritRating>
<HasteRating>253</HasteRating>
<ArmorPenetrationRating>163</ArmorPenetrationRating>
<ExpertiseRating>170</ExpertiseRating>

<weapon>
<dps>255.7</dps>
<speed>3.6</speed>

and compared our standard spec (with a rotation) with Zagor suggestion (with a priority) for 25 hours of many 100 seconds fights (latency set to 150ms). The result is

100 sec fights
GoD : 7458
GoIT : 7609

200 sec fights
GoD : 7155
GoIT : 7177

Of course, we could debate on the 100 seconds length but I feel that having to reapply disease each 100 seconds is an acceptable approximation (at least once per boss in beasts, probably on portals for Jaraxxus if you get to portal location ahead of time, once per mob in Champions at least at beg to not break CCs, at least once per twins if you tank them separately, probably once on Anub each time he comes out). However, even on 200sec long fights, GoIT wins (even if not by much). To Assume that it's possible to maintain disease more than about 3-4 minutes in general in a fight involving movement and target swaping seems unrealistic to me. Moreover it's painful to look at our AP all the time and care about rolling disease while we can just do a simple rotation which is more flexible.

I would think that the reason why GoD is not pulling more dps is :

- GoD permits to exchange 2x(PS-IT)-BS for 2xSS, But even without GoIT, 2x(PS-IT)-BS> 2xSS! The only situation where GoD wins is when a spec has a tight rotation and GoD frees GCDs which can be filled by other abilities (often DC). However, we actually refresh diseases few seconds before they fall, so if we get enough RP through Revitalize/AMS we can simply fire another DC or two without any loss in disease uptime (I'm talking of the standard 0/2 Epidemic spec, still have to take a look at Consider's epidemic spec).

N.B. : GoD has always been a poor glyph for unholy, the only reason it suddenly became better is 4pc T9.

zagor · 10/05/09, 10:10 AM

Originally Posted by Nifty01

I think you are making some wrong assumptions in favor of GoD.

1. You will gain less than 2 extra ticks every 10sec with GoD. Even in a worst case scenario where you reaply diseases every time right before they tick you would gain less. 1 extra tick in average every 10 secs would be much more realistic. If your IT/PS exactly 10secs after you initially applied diseases the loss would be only 2/3 of a tick.

As I said I wasn't sure about this. However, the number of 2 disease ticks was just something I thought of while thinking about it.
In the calcualtion, where I averaged the loss for GoD to 1k over 20sec, I used 2 extra disease ticks, but that's in 20sec, so just as you said, one extra tick every 10sec.

Originally Posted by Nifty01

2. You lose GoDD which gives you 100+dps

This is already included in damage breakdown I used before. All values were taken from Concept's log he posted in this thread. And he's using GoDD.

Originally Posted by Nifty01

3. There will not be any additional WP ticks, since both setups have 100% disease uptime.

I think there will definitely be more WP ticks. Yes the disease uptime is 100%, but with short rotation there's clipping. We both agree there's aprox 1 tick lost every 10sec. GoD rotations will have more disease ticks, and so will WP have more chances to proc.
Another thing is WP will have bigger ticks.

Originally Posted by Nifty01

4.Your max tick might be 400 above your min tick, but since you will randomly apply diseases with proccs up without GoD your average tick with GoD isnt going to be 400 above our average tick without GoD.

You haven't carefully read what I wrote. The value of +400 was only used as an ilustration for max blood disease ticks. In my calculations I used +300 for disease ticks.
With +300 used for diseases, the loss for GoD disease came to 50dps. That didn't include any possible bonus DC in one free cd every 10sec and did not include increase to WP (which I don't know how to portray atm).

Azuwraith · 10/05/09, 10:32 AM

Can we please stop comparing GoD specs over short fights using the simulator?

The simulator in it's current state is awful in simulating GoD specs, period.

Until it can do a starting sequence to set up strong diseases right away, the simulated numbers you see on GoD specs over short fights are going to be much lower than in game.

Citgo · 10/05/09, 10:37 AM

Originally Posted by Consider

Yes, those numbers assume 4p t9. I figure it's a safe assumption - a very safe assumption - to believe that everyone, casual and hardcore alike, will have the 4p bonus by the time 3.3.0 hits, if they don't already have it now.

Originally Posted by nerdfuel

That would be with 4pcT9, Consider is assuming that by 3.3 everyone will have 4pcT9.

Blegh, yeah, wow. Not sure what I was thinking last night. 2.19 -> 2.21 is definitely more realistic than 1.xx -> 2.21.

zagor · 10/05/09, 10:39 AM

At first I was impressed buy the huge numbers from many hours sim and underestimated the loss in value of the glyph on short fights. But then I wanted to see how GoD rotation worked, how would it look like and what were the cons and pros.
That's why I analyzed both rotations in 20sec segments.
What I ignored is one rune rotation to set up diseases (ofc this loss is diminished the longer the fight is; I would say this loss can be ignored after 4-5 rune rotations), and effect of haste on short rotation (not sure how to quantify it in this context, and it could be important).

Originally Posted by Milaz_

I feel that having to reapply disease each 100 seconds is an acceptable approximation (at least once per boss in beasts, probably on portals for Jaraxxus if you get to portal location ahead of time, once per mob in Champions at least at beg to not break CCs, at least once per twins if you tank them separately, probably once on Anub each time he comes out).

On Jaraxx you should never, at least as GoD, put diseases on new portals/volcanoes. Thing is to pestilence those rolling diseases from boss. Those diseases also get spread to all adds afterward.
For Champions, if my dps is important at all, there's not much cc that's actually affected by dots. Just sheep.
Twins, I don't think they're killable on heroic if tanked far apart.
And for Beasts and Anub, I said as much in my post. Rolling on Gormok and Acidmaw is perfectly doable, then on Firemaw I get what procs I can; Icehowl is where it gets tighter, however 2/2 Epidemic helps there, and refreshing diseases before his crash timer.

Looking at procs to refresh diseases if necessary is not hard, it's what has to be done to maximize performance. We did the same for Gragoyle etc.