Just a thought regarding the idea about not clipping diseases.

With Frost, Tundra Stalker does not affect Frost Fever ticks unless it is reapplied with IT (or HB glyph) with a Frost Fever already affecting the target (yours or someone else's).

I am not at luxury to test this at the moment, but perhaps this applies to RoR as well? If we Plague Strike right after BP drops, will the BP ticks be increased by 10% from RoR?

I removed the 9s restriction just for fun and the UB glyph is still better. The lead was cut by about half.

Curious. Even without the 9s restriction, you would still have to refresh diseases eventually, I suppose, which would explain why it's still not worth it. At 5 (assuming you don't have to IT/PS) SSes per 20 seconds, you're only extending it by 15 seconds, meaning you're losing time on the debuff regardless.

Any which way, even if they made the glyph give 6 seconds to your diseases without a cap (or, for simplicity's sake, just make it work like Glyph of Disease - except it would be better due to not causing you to lose a BS every 20 seconds), thus allowing you to never have to reapply IT/PS, it would still have the AoE issue (which I so overlooked at first glance). Going the GoD route would be interesting, though, and could have potential...

Speaking of that, I'ld be curious (if you have the time and/or inclination) if you could calculate what sort of dps that would be - if GoSS essentially read something along the lines of, "Your Scourge Strike ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target as well as any target within 10 yards back to their maximum duration" where it followed the exact same mechanics of GoD, except with the 10 yard addition to get rid of the pesky AoE issue the current glyph causes.

Another alternative would be if they caused GoSS to simply refresh Blood Plague to max duration (and BP alone). What that would cause you to do is then substitute a PS for a Ghoul Frenzy every 20 seconds. With a slight change to Ghoul Frenzy (lower the duration to 20 seconds, slightly buff the haste - or cause the haste to also apply to you, perhaps, to a lesser degree? - or make the haste also increase the rate at which the Ghoul regenerates energy), it would actually make GF worthwhile, while also giving GoSS its place.

At any rate, the GoSS change was simply a means to an end, and the end was reached regardless. Although it being viable would be nice, it's not all that big of a deal, as there are plenty of worthless (or suboptimal - one in the same, to most people) glyphs out there.

Edit: Some random info from the Blood thread which is probably of interest here: 4p t9 works off your melee crit rate. As well, similar to how it "snapshots" your AP with Glyph of Disease and then "rolls" the highest to date, it "snapshots" your crit rate. Aside from a few rare trinkets - Dark Matter, specifically - this doesn't matter a ton, since your crit rate doesn't fluctuate like your AP, but still. Something worth noting. I'm sure there are ways out there to take advantage of it.

Hi guys, a little bit of a newbie question here. I've done some searching but couldn't really dig up much info on it - what exactly is disease clipping? And how do we act to minimise it? (Wouldn't mind seeing this stuff added to the OP)

Is it the case whereby the last ticks of FF/BP are "lost" because of reapplication of diseases through IT/PS? The standard rotation is about 20s (give or take with latency factors etc). However, this means that if we restart the rotation with IT/PS, a disease tick is lost from each disease since they tick at 3s each. In this case, would it be better to wait for the disease to fall off (~1s) completely before renewing?

Yes, it is this.


I haven't looked at the amth on this but every second without diseases on target is a second without Ebon Plagubringer buff (13% to spell damage taken), which would hurt all spell based dps your whole raid delivers during that time. So I'd rather refresh early than late.

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I did some napkin math trying to figure out why 7+ points in Blood clocks better DPS than 10+ points in Frost. The difference between the two is Butchery+Subversion+2H-spec vs. ImpIT+RPM+Black Ice. For simplicity I’ll leave Butchery and RPM out of calculations.

Assuming that Melee is 13%, Scourge Strike is 13% of your DPS, Deathcoil is 13% of your DPS, Blood Strike is 5%, Plague Strike is 4% and Icy Touch is 4% of your DPS the breakdown would be following:

ImpIT + Black Ice (Icy Touch) = 1,15*1,10*0,05 = 1,325% dps
Black Ice (Scourge Strike) = 1,10*0,13 = 1,3% dps
Black Ice (Deathcoil) = 1,10*0,13 = 1,3% dps
TOTAL 3,925% dps

2-H Spec (Melee) = 1,04*0,13 = 0,52%
Subversion+2-H Spec (Scourge Strike) = 1,09*1,04*0,13 = 1,737% dps
Subversion+2-H Spec (Blood Strike) = 1,09*1,04*0,05 = 0,567% dps
Subversion+2-H Spec (Plague Strike) = 1,09*1,04*0,03 = 0,4% dps
TOTAL 3,224% dps

Unless my math is badly off in some point (for example if Blood Strike is actually a lot more than 5% of total dps) the difference must be lying not in Subversion+2-H Spec but the fact that they aren’t that so much worse than Black Ice that it would make up for the dps increase of Bladed Armor+Dark Conviction scaling to our pets and Dark Conviction also gives more wandering plague procs.

@Consider: Is there really a point to TCing/simming tens of different variations that you _think_ would be a nice change? I mean, it is what it is.

And while on the topic of the SS-glyph, all I see are simresults being posted. How is the sim handling the glyph? How have handled the rotation, could you post what the rotation/prio looks like? Just curious.

Considering maximum AoE dmg. We had the discussion about desolations poor uptime in AoE situations and non ideal situations where you have to move alot. In this case this specc could be interesting:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...QcOl,FQJ,10433

you could also shift 1 point from bladed armor in desolation. Or 1 point from bladed armor and 1 point from necrosis in IUP which i really would prefer for most encounters.

Would that make 3/10/58 a good spec then ? Just thinking out loud, some feedback would be nice

Ignore the glyphs, still from old spec

I think the sim-results (that include a Black Ice-spec) are about one page, one click, from this. For you to look back at that is far less time-consuming (and space-consuming) than us answering it over and over again here because you felt you didn't have time to check.

EDIT: Granted, your spec is slightly different from the BI-spec tested earlier but I do recall statements about BI-specs overall not being competetive right now.

As to a point from Desolation to Bladed Armor, I was considering that. Although it is, quite obviously, a single target dps loss (currently simming how much), like you said, it is an AoE damage gain (so long as it's worth BBing over BSing), and if the whole reason you're going 16/0/55 over 11/0/60 is because of the slight loss in single target damage for AoE damage, it's quite likely you'll just want to go 17/0/54.

Loss of about ~6 dps (relative to 16/0/54) and ~14 dps (relative to 11/0/60).
(7508 with 17/0/54 and 7514 with 16/0/54. Looking back to my post yesterday, 7508 is actually what I got for 16/0/54, meaning the two are within the RNG margin of another. )

The AoE gain is difficult to calculate since it all comes down to how many targets, but it is definitely a gain in any situation where you BB over BS. Most likely a fairly decent gain (when compared to how little you lose).

Just one caveat, obvious as it may be - 17/0/54 (and 16/0/55) essentially require 4pt9. Although they are still AoE dps gains without it, the gain is much smaller, while the single target loss is much larger, so I doubt many would consider it worth it until the set bonus. Until then you will want to go either 11/0/60 (with 4 points in Bladed Armor, not 3 in BA and 1 in Dark Conviction) or 12/0/59 (maxed BA, 4/5 Nec), the former being slightly stronger for single target, the latter winning for AoE.

As I said, just was curious, nothing more or less ^^. Just was wondering if it's possible for GoSS to be an upgrade in any disease refreshing/extending manner, or if it's going to always lose out until they go in a completely different direction with it. I know it is what it is, hence all of the previous sim results which didn't even entertain the possibility.

The sim handles it as a priority, and the exact same priority as you would have without the glyph (Blood Plague > Frost Fever > DC if RP capped > SS > BS > DC > Horn). That does mean that diseases fall off before you reapply, most likely (at least BP), but that's no different than without the glyph, so it wouldn't favor one spec over the other.

All the possible variations of the BI spec I tried failed to compete. That said, I didn't try Epidemic-less builds for the AoE reasons - even so, if going the Epidemic-free route is ideal on a single target, it would still be better to 'minor' in Blood. Black Ice simply doesn't scale as it used to.

Edit: Currently working on 17/0/54 stat weights, as I see that being the spec most people will use in BiS. Once those are done, I'll also do 11/0/60 and 12/0/59, as the latter seems best pre-4pt9 in AoE (with only the single digit dps cost on a single target), and the former seems best in single target (although only slightly so at the cost of AoE, as already discussed a bunch of times). Those are probably the three specs I'll be including in any depth come patch day on the OP, unless something changes, someone sees a possibility which everyone else missed, or someone has a real good argument for including something else.

So with the recent changes to Unholy, what the heck are we supposed to do with all this ArP gear? At least with an Oblit based UH build, ArP was useful. Now, it's gonna become one of, if not our lowest dps stat, what with it only affecting BS and our white damage. I'm currently spec'd blood, so I've made a point to get ArP gear. However, I'm close to getting 4pc/Sigil, so I'm thinking UH might be the better choice for me. But man it's gonna be painful having all this ArP gear going to waste.

Changing GoSS to work like GoD will add some DPS due to the "high-proc disease rolling" effect (including RoR for BP), which, in addition to the higher effective disease uptime, may end up being pretty close to GoUB in practice. The SS substitution aspect of the glyph will still be a bust, though. The problem isn't so much that the glyph doesn't let you make enough SS substitutions; the problem is the SS substitutions themselves just aren't worth that much (if anything at all).

With the numbers for Bensch78's gear selection from his last post, without the higher effective disease uptime, substituting SS for PS+IT+5rp is actually a DPS loss before even counting RoR. With different gear selection, you can get a very slight gain per SS substitution (instead of a loss in Bensch78's case), but the most you can get is 1 substitution per 20 sec, so unless the gain from 1 substitution is substantial (which it isn't), you just won't get much of a gain.

I don't know what "the end" is for Blizzard. If it's to get Unholy not to use OB, then it's reached; if it's to do so without netting a DPS loss for 2H Unholy, then it's still a good glyph away as far as I can tell. If you give Blizzard devs the benefit of the doubt and assume they aren't bad enough to overestimate a flat change like adding SS to Subversion, then judging from Ghostcrawler's comments, they are aiming for the latter, but overestimated the gain from the new GoSS.

Can someone link the 16/0/55 build discussed here as the one linked on the first post has 5/5 Necrosis and 0/5 Desolation while Consider is talking about no Necrosis.

Also I'm curious how 1 point in Bladed Armor compares to 1 point in Necrosis/Desolation with say 232 T9

Another thing I've noticed is that noone bothers with Corpse Explosion (I know we're pretty tight on talent points already) but as far as AOE I've had some great success with it in the past, topping charts over mages/rogues and pretty much everyone else. Granted it's a complete waste for single targets/small groups and in the current end game content it's utility is limited, but if we see a return of Naxx size groups in Icecrown would Corpse Explosion ever make it to the must have list or is it still inferior due to the single target dps loss?

In terms of clearing trash ya it was nice, but these forums aren't about trash clears. On boss fights it's essentially useless as there is generally no available corpse to explode but your own ghoul. It's been proven in the past that exploding your ghoul does not make up for the DPS loss of having no pet while you wait for the CD to summon another one. Also for consideration is the fact your ghoul will have been buffed before a boss pull which means your next ghoul will do less damage since it doesn't have the buffs. Virtually all DKs skip this talent because the situations where it might be useful are so far and few between that the point is better served elsewhere. This could change for Icecrown, but since we know nothing about it yet speculation is not worth the time.

The problem with Corpse explosion is that its hardly usable om ulduar / totc bosses. The only boss i could regularly use it on was Hodir. Freyas mobs are elementals, Razors dwarves die to fast to be aoe'd and its only groups of 2/3, mimirons adds are mechanical and thats about it...

U can take it to boost dps on trash if you like, but it wont help on any boss. I havent done anub 25 HM yet, maybe its good there.

*edit: damn you canadian for being faster then me. srry for the double info*

We've discussed this before in earlier threads. Corpse explosion is nice on Razorscale P1, Thorim arena, and a ton of trash. It's not worth taking for boss encounters alone unless your guild is having real trouble in thorim's arena, and frost builds with howling blast are better there anyway. It's not a mathematically worthwhile talent, so you don't see it discussed on the EJ forums very often, but I do take it myself. I find it a lot of fun to use, and while it doesn't help progression one bit I get a thrill out of being #1 on trash pulls.

You all speak as if you can't top AoE meters as an Unholy DK without CE >>.

Really though, although you are free to take it (take the point from the same talent you would take points for IUP/GF from), it's obviously not a boost on single target, and I don't consider it to be one on AoE, as AoE outside of bosses is largely irrelevant. Trash is cool and all but it's nonexistent in the current tier of raiding (and even were it, the spell simply has too many limitations for little of a gain). Fun it may be, but optimal in the vast majority of situations it is not.

Desolation > Necrosis > Bladed Armor (for single target)
Bladed Armor > Necrosis > Desolation (for AoE situations)

In a situation where you aren't completely AoEing but you are simply using Pestilence (meaning you are not bothering with DnD or Blood Boil. Probably something like Faction Champions) Desolation easily pulls ahead of Necrosis, and may pull ahead of Bladed Armor (depends on your gear level).

I put in a "food chain" for those three talents (plus Dark Conviction) in the OP, for both single target and AoE situations, so people experimenting with specs have an idea where each talent lies in relation to one another and why some of the trade offs are made. I also added the remainder of the stat weights to the OP (the ones I posted + the weapon dps/speed results + the set bonus results).

I double-checked the specs, and there should be no errors in them; they're exactly what has been being talked about. I'll probably change around the spec section tomorrow. The best way to think about speccing in 3.2.2 is as going 7/0/53 with the remaining 11 points being spec in the various combinations depending on your gear (whether or not you have 4p t9, essentially) and whether you want to min-max your single target damage as much as you can for the AoE loss(es).

Also added in the new BS nerf, although it hardly affects us (4 -> 3 charges baseline, 2 -> 1 charge from the glyph).

Did you guys ever think about the possibility of dropping reaping since the recent nerfs to SS in 3.2?

In our normal Unholy rotation we have enough space for an additional GCD.

Rotation would be:

PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-DC
DC-SS-SS-BS-BS-DC

All Sims done with the predefined 2H Ulduar-Set (4PCT8 included)

17-0-54 with Reaping - 7138 dps

17-0-54 without Reaping - 7177 dps

Now the same Sim done with 4PCT9 (other Stats remaining)

17-0-54 with Reaping - 7495 dps

17-0-54 without Reaping - 7547 dps


Now the same Sim done with 4PCT9 and + 200 Str (other Stats remaining) just looking for some sort of scaling

17-0-54 with Reaping - 7880 dps

17-0-54 without Reaping - 7934 dps

Looking at this numbers you are gaining roughly 50 dps... don´t have any trouble with Blood Tap destroying your rotation... ARP will be a little bit more valuable... 2PCT9 will proc more often...

Perhaps someone can do the sims on his own to prove my statements or to show me, how foolish i am...

Edit: Put in Rotation

When is the best time to reapply bone shield? I've tried doing that with the help of blood tap but it usually messes up my rotation.

Also I wanted to ask when to use pestilence instead of 1 blood strike. Is one add enough? From the raiddps point of view it's always better to use pestilence to get EP up but I'd just like to know since usually there is a boomkin to apply 13% spelldmg buff if the add is being DPSed by casters.

/cancelaura Blood Tap
/cast Blood Tap

Hit this macro after you Scourge Strike with your death runes, hit Bone Shield, then hit the macro again.

edit: I believe you can also simply Blood Tap and Bone Shield after using Blood Strike without your rotation being affected.

With the way Death Runes and Blood Tap work right now Blood Tapping after Blood Striking will drop the Death Rune back to a Blood Rune. After doing an FU strike with Death Runes while all your runes are on cooldown is the best time to refresh bone shield for sure.

You'll also want to cancel Blood Tap after you use it, if the Blood Tap buff fades after a Blood Strike, the upcoming Death Rune will get thrown back to a Blood Rune.

It wasn't always like this, Blizzard has made quite a few unannounced changes to the rune system from time to time. For example, having a Blood Strike avoided used to instantly create a Death Rune, but that was "fixed" some time ago.

When both my Death Runes are up (and before any Unholy runes refresh) I hit Bone Shield and then Blood Tap. Obliterate. Macro to cancel the Blood Tap buff (so it doesn't cause any of those random yet irritating blood/death rune issues). Smoothest way I've found to handle things without it messing up your rotation (which this shouldn't - it takes a GCD to refresh Bone Shield, but that's just how BS works regardless of when you use it, and you should have the extra to spare anyways).

Anyways, unfortunately, all of that talk is soon to be quite irrelevant.

Bensch is indeed right. Doing 17/0/54 with and without Reaping, as well as 11/0/60 with and without Reaping, Reaping definitely loses. No question. The average SS is approximately ~6500 (depending on which spec and such) while the average BS is ~3200 (once again, depending on which spec). Three talent points for an extra 100 damage every 20 seconds (5 dps) just isn't worth it. And it is really that simple since SS and 2 BS both generate the same amount of RP, and we have the extra GCD to spare so the latter isn't any hassle in that regard. 3 points in Necrosis/Desolation/Bladed Armor/Dark Conviction (which they go in all depends on which spec you are, and whether you are pre 4p t9 or post 4p t9) easily wins out. My sim (of which I did many) results were showing it to be more like a 60-70 dps increase instead of a 50 one as Bensch was getting, but either way, it's definitely a single target dps increase. It's also an AoE one as Reaping has zero value in that regard already, but whatever talent you take will at least give you something.

I can rerun the EP values tomorrow (as well as the ones for other specs, which I keep pushing off), but it should increase the value of ArP by about ~15%ish. Still makes it a horrible stat, relatively speaking, but at least it will beat out agility and post-melee-pre-spell-cap hit. Crit may change slightly in value too, but nothing which will affect gearing. Everything else should be the same, more or less.

Has the side effect of giving Desolation better uptime (which, simmed, won't show, but in reality, will certainly help) and, as said, giving 2p t9 slightly better uptime as well (not terribly so because of the ICD, but still, higher is higher, so a definite plus).

I've editted the OP to reflect all of this (since I don't really see it being disproved. The math is very basic and very easy. If anything, I'm kinda surprised how no one thought of it before - or at least thought to prove it and then post of it. Disappointed in myself!). Barring any actual changes to the PTR, this is probably (hopefully) the last thing which will change the specs.