There are some voices claiming 15/0/56 DPS is higher than 3/13/55 in the DW threat.
Anybody here that could test/confirm that?
I know the new direction of discussing here is already going towards 3.3, but remember Blizz will tweak the numbers anyway, so there is no use for statweights for 3.3 yet
The only point that should be elaboreted here and at the page 1 post is that DW Unholy will be dead (99%), and there is no need to spend any dkp for 1h weapons when planning going unholy in 3.3.

I'm not so good with Kahorie's simulator yet, but this is the exact issue I've been toying around with lately. I know Rawr isn't exactly the best tool to determine what specs are the best (esp. since it seems to have zero support for Imp. UP), but between Tankard O'Terror + Aledar's Battlestar (my armory is currently toying with Singed Vis'kag) Vs Betrayer of Humanity, Rawr seems to enthusiastically support 15/0/56 vs any other spec. Not to mention so does the Team Robot Simulator, but I know it being a new tool makes it's support not carry much weight. But, for the sake of offering something rather than just saying I confirm...

Using my toon w/ the default rotation and full buffs, the Tankard and Battlestar (gemmed w/ Bold Dragons Eye, btw) 15/0/56 sims roughly 120 DPS higher than 3/13/55 (~7170+/-30 vs 7050+/-30 dps)

It could be for a variety of reasons - my gear level is still Ulduarish, maybe my playstyle just inherently favors blood spec somehow (as my actual game playing seems to show, so I kinda tend to believe Robot/Rawr).

So, yea. My limited testing/experience says 15/0/56 is a bit higher than 3/13/55. But I'm personally not 100% sure (especially at my particular level of gear) and I'm still playing with both specs.

SS would be really good once the spell part of the attack gets 100% crit bonus. However, I suspect that will be too much and SS will move into an 80% physical damage strike because the double melee/spell attack was hard to code properly, would hit like a truck in PvP on some situations, and somewhat hard for a causal player to understand what is going on.

Oblit is also an 80% attack, however SS will not eat your diseases in the base strike.

Just tested SS again on the new PTR build. The shadow damage portion doesn't crit at all anymore I banged the dummy for 10minutes, not a single crit from shadow damage...the physical portion was critting normally tho.

SS was nerfed from the previous build. The shadow portion no longer can crit, and Ebon Plaguebringer no longer affects the shadow portion (the shadow multiplier is now ~0.924 now instead of 1.0438).

I really wouldn't be surprised to see the crit and some of the buffs/talents buffing the shadow part removed. All this double dipping and double crits would make it cause numerous problems, which would be most apparent on gimmick fights that include +% dmg done.

Actually, the finest example for this case would be Hodir. Sure it's a boss few might care about but that would in no way justify the numbers the doubledipping and doublecritting scourge strikes would reach there. Putting numbers down, the shadow part of a double crit would be a 6 digit number.

I can understand reducing some of the double dipping, but without the ability to double crit, the damage of the ability plummets, such that it becomes little better than the current version.

Two tables below, both with the Ebon Plague nerfed factored, one with both parts being able to crit, and one without:

X is the damage the physical part does on a regular hit.

Assumptions made:

• Based on logs/sims, X is about 2400 in moderate gear levels. That 4,000 number thrown around early was X already averaged with critting thrown in.
• The crit rate of the physical portion is about 50%, and the crit rate of the shadow portion is 35% - it's most likely not affected by Subversion/Vicious Strikes, or so it appears on the PTR. Potlol's crit rates seem a bit on the high side, although that ould simply be his gear/good RNG.
• Hit/expertise capped.
• Partial resists ignored for simplicity's sake, and because they're so minor anyways.

Physical / Shadow	Total Damage based on Physical	Total Damage	Chance of Happening
Hit / Hit	X + 0.924X	2400 + 0.924 (2400) = 4618	(1 - .5)(1 - .35) = 0.325
Hit / Crit	X + 2(0.924X)	2400 + 2 (0.924 x 2400) = 6835	(1 - .5)(.35) = 0.175
Crit / Crit	2.3X + 2(0.924(2.3X))	(2.3 x 2400) + 2(0.924(2.3 x 2400)) = 15721	(.5)(.35) = 0.175
Crit / Hit	2.3X + 0.924(2.3X)	(2.3 x 2400) + 0.924(2.3 x 2400) = 10621	(.5)(1-.35) = 0.325

Multiplying the total damage of each combination by the chance of them happening - (0.325 x 10621) + (0.175 x 15721) + (0.175 x 6835) + (0.325 x 4618) - gives you an average SS of 8900.

Now, however, taking out the ability to crit:

Physical / Shadow	Total Damage based on Physical	Total Damage	Chance of Happening
Hit / Hit	X + 0.924X	2400 + 0.924 (2400) = 4618	(1 - .5)(1) = 0.500
Crit / Hit	2.3X + 0.924(2.3X)	(2.3 x 2400) + 0.924(2.3 x 2400) = 10621	(.5)(1) = 0.500

Multiplying the total damage of each combination by the chance of them happening - (0.5 x 10621) + (0.5 x 4618) - gives you an average SS of 7619.

So, yeah. Taking out the ability to crit can't possibly be intentional (not if they want Reaping to be taken, since it was already somewhat borderline before). If it is, it's an approximate 15% nerf relative to the previous PTR version and a mere ~10% buff relative to the current live version. A 10% buff to SS is still decent, and probably enough to cover for the UB nerf, but that's all. Not enough to make the value of ArP that high. Not enough to make Reaping worth it. Nothing like that. Not enough to warrant all the work they're putting into the new version and all the PvP balancing implications they're going to have to deal with.

More likely they were trying to change the shadow portion to the correct crit modifier and things didn't work out properly.

The EP nerf isn't that big of a deal, especially if it was changed so our dps wouldn't be too ridiculous on Hodir/Twin Valk type fights. I assume that means BI isn't working as well, however? Which, once again, isn't that big of a deal since BI didn't seem competitive regardless, but still, something which would be nice to know.

Edit: I forgot to factor in the meta for crit modifiers, but it wouldn't shift things all that much (especially if the meta didn't affect the crit modifier of the shadow portion, which I'm not sure on). The idea wasn't so much to show the average SS hit before and the average SS hit now as it was to show the average SS hit before relative to the average SS hit now, and so far as that goes, the meta wouldn't change things noticeably.

@Consider: Ebon Plague nerf? Are we talking about how it wasn't being applied on partial resists? Is it fair to call that a nerf and not a bug? There's not really any evidence so far that it's intentional from what I've read.

If Ebon Plague has always done that (I've never invested much time into learning about resist mechanics), then I don't know what you're talking about. Either way, this is the first I've heard of it. There's nothing in the patch notes (or anywhere) to suggest it's an intentional nerf and I haven't read anything elsewhere about Ebon Plague this patch.

How it wasn't being applied at all. I'm not saying it's intentional (or that the non critting is intentional). That post was merely speculating *if* it was intentional, that it would make little sense, and be probably the biggest nerf they could give to the new ability.

Not to say that post was speculation. It wasn't. It's the current form of the ability on the PTR and, although there may not be any evidence it's intentional, there's also not much evidence that it's unintentional, aside from what you might read into GC's posts.

Thus, it was worth looking at the math. In my opinion, at any rate.

The partial resist thing has always worked that way, by the way.

Thanks for the clarification. I was confused by your use of the word nerf because I usually associate that with an intentional change (though I realize that's not always the case).

Putting that aside: something which I don't think I've seen mentioned yet, is that GoIT should easily compare to GoDnD for AoE damage in 3.3. I imagine GoDD will probably be the best choice to replace with DnD for an AoE fight, though I suppose that could depend on what sort of fight mechanics we see in ICC.

AoE-Damage caps at 10 targets, the high-end encounter right now never deal with that many mobs at the same time. In regards to ICC, of course, nothing can be said about it before we now the encounter mechanics, so discussion is pointless.

However, as long as Pestilence works the way it does, there will be a certain number of targets, where GoIT starts to outperform GoDnD, since IT damage scales linearly with number of mobs.

Let's assume IT deals 1200 damage per tick per mob (without glyph). This equals 400 dps per mob.
D&D without glyph deals about 1050 damage per tick (including crits, numbers are roughly from a recent parse). Over ten seconds this yields 10500 damage, but you can only use D&D every 15 seconds, so it is 700 dps per mob. Both glyphs increase the respective damage by 20%, so as soon as base-IT overtakes base-D&D it would technically be better to glyph IT. The problem is Wandering Plague and the trouble associated with calculating its impact. If I remember correctly, WP can only proc once per second since you pestilenced all targets simultaneously, I assume that you get only one WP proc every 3 seconds, dealing 1200 damage to up to 10 mobs (WP is affected by the cap).

So, let's look at the case with 10 mobs:
IT deals 400 dps per mob. Wandering Plague does every 3 second 12000 damage, that is another 400 dps per mob. Only 50% of WP can be attributed to Frost Fever (Pestilence makes both diseases tick simultaneously), so IT deals 600 dps per mob as opposed to D&D 700 dps per mob. In this case the formula for D&D is
where x is the number of enemies with x >= 10
The formula for IT is
So, in this case GoIT would overtake GoD&D at 13 mobs.

Also, if you consider that there are pretty much no "pure AoE" fights, GoIT vs. GoDnD is pretty much a no-brainer. Right now, Anub'arak hard is probably as AoE as it gets and in exclusively all top-parses on WMO FF damage overtakes DnD damage (if you add half of the WP damage to FF damage). And those are probably all cases where DnD was glyphed.