• frmorrison

Search the DK forum for Ghoul or AotD, nearly all threads remain in the forum, just sometimes they fall off the first page.

Anyway, since people are talking about AotD, when can you safely use AotD on Anub? I used it sub-30% but then the ghouls pulled on of the Spiders off the icepatch, causing tanking issues.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Symphonia

It depends on your strat. When Anub get's to around 5-8%, we start ignoring adds and let them burrow while we single target Anub down. I use that opportunity to use AotD since the adds will be off the ice patch anyway, but I'm sure not every guild does it this way.

 

Archonel

What the above post says about 5% or so,it removes some add tank healing in the last few critical moments. If you remember to use it anyway.

They're also not bad for scarab exterminating. Assuring they fade before anub reemerges.

 

Illu

I actually use AotD while tanking at 5%, to make the incoming damage easier to predict for the tanks for a few sec, and it doesn't really matter if they pull the burrowers off at that point. I wouldn't do it at 30% tho, I think it creates unnecessary chaos.

 

Aryee

Hey, first time poster. Just wondering if there were DK's out there for Anub 25 HM using significantly altered spec's/rotations for Anub HM to push out more dps. Currently I am using 0/2 Epi with GoDnD, IT and Ghoul with rotation:

IT>PS>DND>Dump>SS>BS repeat

for about 11.5k DPS steady during p1 and p3. Is there anything I could be doing differently?

 

Bonecaller

The same for me. Army doesn't help us at Lord Jaraaxus (you could summon it long before the fight starts, but i wouldn't risk a wipe because my ghouls taunt the adds so i don't use it at all in heroic), FC (could possibly destroy some CC, we are supposed to not summon any uncontrolable pets) and Anub just at the end, when we already don't focus the adds anymore.

I think that the only bosses where you can safely use them w/o any raid members whining is NB and Twins. So i think, this will be a straight and big nerf for TOC. I don't know that many ICC encounters to see any benefit from it.

If they at least halved the cast time to 3 seconds, it might be considered using it again aside of the beginning of some(!) fights.

Perhaps they simply don't want it to be another DPS cooldown.

 

7alisman

IMO although not the most efficient, the best time to use Army on Anub is during the submerge phase, to help drop the little adds and bring the raid into next phase with as little amount of stacks of the debuff as possible. Granted it might not provide the most efficient use of their dps, but it definitely makes the healers lives easier in the <30% phase.

 

Washow

But can't we use the pet command to control the army since we are unholy? Just spam petfollow a few times and put it on anub. To be honest, I never used aotd on anub before though, as taunting an add in p3 could be a huge mistake

 

• Darkside

You can't control AotD.

Apparently you can.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

• frmorrison

When I use the pet attack or pet stay commands the AotD follows it (requires the perma ghoul talent). The issue is when you forget to spam the pet attack button and they attack whatever.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Necromir

Is the taunt ae or just single target spam taunts?

Either way it seems p2 anub is definitely the place to use it.

 

Illu

Indeed you can control them as unholy if you have the ghoul out with MoG, but like fmorrison said you really need to spam the key if so because they are 'designed' to attack strays somehow, or else maybe they go for anything that can be taunted first.

When I use it, I'm not really concerned about what dps they can do. Sure it's good if they actually help out with it, but the primary use to me is if I can use it as a extra damage mitigation Cd, since it mitigates spell damage as well unlike parry and dodge on their own. the only thing to watch out for in the Anub case is that the freezing slash ends the channeling, so if you want it to mitigate that, use it so that you just have a moment left on the channel as that hits.

edit: I dunno. Is the scarabs really much of a concern in p2? They never were for us anyway.. not enough that AotD would matter anyway.

 

• frmorrison

Sometimes people get the stacking DoT, so the AotD can take care of a few scarabs. Anyway, it is a safe use of ability that is helpful to your group.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

insane_machine

This was brought up around page 23, but the theories behind this odd behavior do not seem to fully explain the issue to me. In specific, I was comparing my latest Twin Valkyr parse with some of the top Death Knight logs on wowmeteronline. The top one recorded seemed ideal for comparing.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay | 16401
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay | 12038

See, if you put them side by side, there is a similar kill time, same number of Autoattacks, same number of Wandering Plague hits and around the same disease ticks. Average autoattack is ~20% more, average disease tick is ~30% more. Could be explained by the extra Empowered buff, crit %, other RNG, gear and whatnot. Hardly what bothers me.

But Wandering Plague in specific is as close as it gets to double damage per hit (4812 to 2407 and same with max values) and I cannot find what is it that causes such an increase even going through [Browse Events] to compare logs line by line.

Actually a probably simpler way to look at it, would be to try explain why WP in parse B is ~8% above average disease tick while in parse A WP is ~65% higher.

What is missing here?

 

Consider

Wandering Plague (and Necrosis) double dip from both the normal Light/Darkness debuff and the Empowered Light/Darkness buff. As such, higher Empowered Light/Darkness (Darkness is better, by the way, as it lasts 5 seconds longer) will make your WP not only do higher max damage, but higher average damage relative to diseases. WP simply gains more from the Empowered buff than regular disease ticks.

Pot had 40 seconds of an Empowered buff. Lorelol had 15 seconds.

Pot is going to have higher WP damage. A lot higher WP damage.

Who is John Galt?

 

eventually

I talked about it in my stratfu guide (found here)

As Consider put it, its all to do with the empower buff double dipping. To quote what I wrote

The key is to have enough buff stacks to gain empower from the vortex damage, this guarantees 2 empowers per fight. This isn't luck based as I've had over 16k two weeks in a row now using the same strategy.

 

MorikTheMad

Sorry if this is a newbish question (I am not yet lvl 80, so haven't even started raiding... I just like reading all sorts of theorycraft):

In the 3.3 discussion section of the guide:
I tried a few quick searches on google, but couldn't seem to find anything about any inherent benefits of just ilvl.

Could someone explain what it is about ilvl which would make a lower AP-equivalent set of items better, just because they have a higher ilvl?

EDIT: I misread the table--I missed that it was just the set bonus, thus the confusion.

 

Mortak

Well an increase in stats will go hand in hand with an ilvl increase. Since the stats are pretty much tied to ilvl with some minor exceptions.

 

MorikTheMad

Well, I grok that part... I'm just wondering, if the stats don't lead to more AP equivalent, who cares?
Or is it more like "Well, 40 AP isn't really all that much, so the added benefit of non-DPS stuff, like more health or armor, or some other stuff like that, is worth more than the 40 AP loss"?

 

ultimakaiser

Sorry, but you didn't quite get the concept of the post. The post stated afaik that there is a 40 DPS gap between 4p T9 and 2P T10. 1 AP = 1 DPS thus Consider took the 40 DPS difference as 40 AP to overcome to make a switch worthwile.

He further referred to an overall stat upgrade that would occur by ugrading one Tier thus easily achieving those 40 AP to make a switch to 2P T9+2P T10.

Hope the clarification was helpful.

 

• Darkside

There's a possibility that the increase in ilvl might not lead to a 40 AEP equivalent increase, but that hasn't been the trend in the past. Yes, Blizz could do something stupid and itemize the gear terribly, but the odds of that happening are very low (and unprecedented) so there's no point in making that assumption for the time being.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Kalitari

Considering the Army of the Dead changes I took a look at my last AotD logs and made some math. Seems that at the moment, in live, my AotD is usually worth around 60k damage. When you take into account the 6 second channeling time, this translates to AotD channeling being worth 10 000 dps. This is pretty much always a dps increase. Hwoever, if 3.3 will see 50% drop in damage with no effect on channeling time channeling AotD midfight becomes questionable.

If you could have kept doing damage with regular rotation during the 6 seconds using AotD is probably dropping your raids total damage due to the risk of Ebon Plague dropping of even for a few seconds. If there is even a few seconds when you can't dps, starting to channel then and losing "only" 3 or 4 seconds of of regular dps time might be worth it and using AotD pre-fight is still as much "free dps" as ever.

The one thing to consider is that while you are channeling you are doing almost zero dps (barring diesease and UB DoTs) but after the Army is summoned your dps goes up for the duration of the Army. This means starting channeling AotD a few seconds before Anub'arak goes into P3 or other similar situations might actually be worth it still. While its not a dps increase over the whole fight it "pushes" some of the actual damage to later phase of the fight where you'll need it more.

The logs of my AotD uses (logged last tuesday):

Northrend Beasts (10M Heroic) kill: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis AotD did 61211 damage total

Jaraxxus (10M Heroic) kill: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis AotD did 59118 damage total

Faction champions (10M Heroic) kill: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis AotD 37142 damage total

Twin Valkyr (10M Heroic) kill: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis AotD 93779 damage total

 

Marrak

Just a question about the 17/0/54 Spec for 3.3:

What confuses me a bit is the fact that you spent 5 points in the crit talent but left out 1 Point in Morbidity and not even taking Necrosis. Is it really worth to get lousy 5% crit instead of 5% more DC damage and/or 16%/20% extra Shadow Damage on Autoattacks?

 

Milney

The new Scourge Strike "double dips" into crit - that is, both parts of the attack can crit independently of each other as far as I'm aware.

This drastically improves the effectiveness of crit - especially a flat out 5% increase to *everything* that can crit (including Blood Plague assuming 4pT9 in 3.3).

As Scourge Strike will make up the bulk of our damage, the increase this 5% crit gives is far larger than an increase to Death Coil damage (especially considering the halving of UB damage) whilst Necrosis has simply been dropping in relative value since the start of WotLK.

At least that's my interpretation - at work so couldn't run a sim with Morbidity/Necrosis.

 

DateeForma

Im a bit nosey so i took a look at your actual dps for the fight just for comparison and i noticed your dps is kind of low. I figured maybe you were a bit undergeared but then i took a look around and noticed you have 8 expertise rating. Instead of the actual 26 you need to be cappd and not messing up your rotation. Is that on purpose or......

It would probably benefit you greatly to get your expertise rating up to par. Youre also grossly above hit cap. good luck.