Hence why spell hit is valued so highly now. It is essential to cap it.

e: Clarity.

Recount only shows 1 part of SS. That 12k scourge strike is 12k shadow damage, what you don't see is the 5k physical damage that goes with it. So your highest SS was around 17-18k probably.

Those very high SS crits are on Twins in ToC, because of the weird buff they give and as you know SS double dips from that. Say you do 200% damage when you get the buff, that means the physical part does twice as much and the shadow part does nearly 4 times as much (because of the buff on the physical part).

As for the pestilence thing. It's actually really simple but you have to REALLY be on the ball. You have to use runes the millisecond they are available, or you will miss your pestilence mark.
After you've done the initial rotation the best way to memorize when you need to PT is to simply say: Use all FU runes for SS, If you have a set of death runes coming up those are for SS too, if you have a set of blood runes coming up you have to Pestilence and blood strike.
Basically you spam SS until you see your blood runes coming up, and then you have to get ready to spam pestilence.

Deathcoils are used in the free GCD, if you use your runes as they are available then you should have plenty of GCD after you used your set.

For gargoyle, it depends a bit on the fights. But I tend to pop a gargoyle after my first rotation, that usually gives me all trinket buffs up.
After that I watch the timer, the moment it is available again I wait until my trinkets proc again (I generally want greatness, unholy strength and my sigil to be up), and then I use it. (They last 10+ seconds which is enough to get 60 RP).
In the case of fight where we don't have BL at the start (On saurfang for example we pop BL at the start as that is the only moment when 100% of the dps is focused on the boss), I try to just leave gargoyle up until BL goes up, and then wait for trinkets and proc it.
Empower Rune Weapon is a good ability to use when you need gargoyle asap as well.

I tend to save blood tap for emergencies where i want an instant pestilence. Say for example on Marrowgar when he starts bonestorm in 5 seconds but I only just used my deathrunes on scourge strike.

Refined BiS lists have been added. Nothing hugely surprising, when you consider the shift in weights. ArP is up to ~1100 (non Shadowmourne) and ~1200 (Shadowmourne) passive, for the curious. I'll run "absolute BiS" stat weights after my raid tonight, although I doubt much will change aside from ArP getting a bit stronger. Crit/agi are likely to plateau, as they do decrease in value with themselves (unlike ArP), although the increased level of gear will likely keep them from actually going down.

As to the post asking about the set weights - those are only for the set bonuses. Not the pieces themselves. A 4P bonus weight does not include a 2P bonus weight, or any such thing.

Okay, so just to clarify a few things for posterity's sake:

Recount is broken (for SS) until updated. But I did some looking and apparently "DrDamage" is updated already to show the proper SS numbers. I'm sure Recount will be updated soon, it can't be hard to make it look for "Scourge Strike hits for X Shadow" and then "Scourge Strike hits for X Physical".

About the rotation, in simpler terms the rotation translates to:
IT/PS to get your diseases up
BS to get desolation up
PT with deso buff
SS when you have FU runes
PT and BS as Blood runes are refreshing (Which comes first? I assume BS will be running out about the same time as diseases do, so is that refreshed before Pestilence?)
DC whenever no runes are available

Hopefully I got that right? Understanding why the rotation works makes it so much easier to actually do it, especially when a natural disaster happens where you have to move off target or chase it down or whatever.

Re: Gargoyle - I have ERW, trinket, speed pot and gargoyle lined up on my bar... when I plan to use Garg I usually pop them in order. That means I only have to skip one DC, if any, which should be acceptable. Gargoyle benefits from AP and Haste, based on the OP, what about Crit/Arpen?

EDIT: For clarification

Hotfix/bug deployed that prevents the Shadow portion of Scourge Strike from critting.

The shadow portion of Scourge Strike does not seem to be critting anymore as of today (yes, recount screenshot):



Edit: Too slow!

How much of a DPS nerf is the hotfix going to be?

I was just about to post that .

I modified the sim.
Fotm GoD spec with ToC items:

Before	10426
After	9409

That's about 10% less damage.
DC/IT/Ghoul glyphs are the top choice again.
New (ToC level with T10 bonuses) weights are:

AttackPower	1
Strength	3,02
Agility	1,3
CritRating	1,97
HasteRating	0,86
ArmorPenetrationRating	2
ExpertiseRating	1,56
BeforeMeleeHitCap<8%	3,33
SpellHitRating	0,85

Seems a bit extreme, but i'm sure other classes would have demanded change soon anyway.

Modified simulator is showing that we go back to our old ways. No Reaping. No Glyph of Disease on single target. A gain of about 60 DPS in my gear with these switches.

In better gear, both eventually come back into style.

Leather gear is now extremely unattractive for Unholy DKs. Arpen has dropped in value enough so that it is less than a 100 dps gain gemming it in the best of the best gear on a single target.

I'm getting Haste and Crit to be about the same level of EP. Crit has dropped a ton, which explains why the leather is now very undesirable.

Anyone have an idea on the spec in response to this nerf?

Edit: Beat to the punch.

Saradome it's safe to assume people will post these things without your asking.

I originally just compared 3/3 Reaping 2/3 Morbidity 0/5 Necrosis to 0/3, 3/3, 2/5 in my current gear and got slightly higher results without Reaping. Loading in some ICC gear brought Reaping back into style. GoD, too!

GoD only gets about 30~ dps higher than Dark Death in the very best ICC gear.


I do get the highest DPS with 12/0/59. Necrosis seems to edge out Dark Conviction by about 10 dps.

Now with quickly optimized BiS lists: http://pastie.org/738441.txt

On the plus side, I had a song title ready for the thread and the inevitable. On the down side, didn't really see it coming a day after.

At any rate, so far, my findings are mirroring Daia, more or less. Expect a front post update tomorrow (or Saturday, pending work), as I figure how to frame some areas, and ensure all conclusions are completely accurate. That, and I'm not really in the mood to completely revamp the entire front page after having just done so, except this time nothing could be done in advance.

That aside, not much else to say. Dps will still be ahead of what it was last patch, simply behind what it was for the past 24 hours, although the loss of dps is the least of my concerns regarding this change.

did the scourge strike tooltip change accurately as well? Now says 60% + 576 physical

[20:39:25.956] Jonneh casts Scourge Strike on Fjola Lightbane
[20:39:26.031] Jonneh Scourge Strike Fjola Lightbane Absorb (15006)
[20:39:26.513] Jonneh Scourge Strike Fjola Lightbane Absorb (90582)
[20:39:31.648] Jonneh casts Scourge Strike on Fjola Lightbane
[20:39:31.666] Jonneh Scourge Strike Fjola Lightbane *14934*
[20:39:32.100] Jonneh Scourge Strike Fjola Lightbane *97190* (R: 4541)

It was nice while it lasted

Hardly surprising though really, but even so I think there could have been better solutions. How could they have failed to see this on the ptr and catch it then if its so unacceptable? The above paste is from one fight with insane buff available (Which has always done similar on WP), I suppose 20k double crits on normal targets is still on the high side.

Will have to wait and see where we stand after all is said and done!

Voicing my support here for your thread Consider, as I can't do so on the US forums. Nobody will listen, but it should still be said.

since dark conviction obviously wont be as good anymore and bladed armor isnt scaling that great either, how about a 7/10/53+1 build? Black Ice should be a decent talent, considering it affects most of our dmg.

I was thinking this exact same thing. Waiting for raid to end before I can putz around with it.

Black Ice is still not worth it. No more of our dps is shadow now then it was in 3.2.2. Slightly less, in fact. Thus the talent is as unattractive as ever (not because it's a bad talent, but because it's an expensive one, with twice it's actual cost).

I really just hate that they keep switching this on us. I just blew a ton of DKP on armor pen boots from ICC25.

Furthermore, have a look at T10 gear. Theres armor pen on almost everything. Does this mean Blood becomes the more attractive spec for most encounters?

I'm thinking about setting up blood as my second spec and using it for single target fights and then swapping to unholy aoe spec/gear for aoe.

Also, is there a chance that the shadow portion of SS isnt hitting at all? I'm decked out in close to BiS gear pre icc and my SS crits for 5.5k. Thats definitely JUST 60% weapon damage + (whatever the number is now), and not the included shadow damage. Does the shadow damage show up separate? or where would I find a parse for how much my actual ss shadow damage hits/crits for if indeed it is distinct?

I got 15/0/56 as the most optimal (single target) spec in present level gear. Although one SS is certainly stronger than two BS, it's the opportunity cost of those three talent point which pushes Reaping out.

In heavy ICC gear, Reaping and BA both pull ahead of Dark Conviction, and as such you just shift those points, making the build this 15/0/56. However, GoD didn't quite catch up, still falling about 20 dps short. With Shadowmorne, it likely does win out, but short of that, GoDD seems to stay.

I'll be working on stat weights next, and determining when exactly Reaping/BA become worth it or not.

In the combat log, yes. WoL and WMO will both show two Scourge Strike entries in a parse, one physical, one shadow, each representing the two different portions of the strike.