thefiddle
09-24-2009, 06:22 AM
3.2.2 Brings three crucial changes to talents for dps DKs and a fix for the Tier 9 four piece bonus.
a) The way it seems to me, there are two things which make blood very attractive: the ability to use 2 cooldowns (hysteria and Dancing Rune Weapon) for burst dps and the 2 target cleave. The first nerf diminishes the cleave ability by quite a lot: almost a half.
b) Subversion now effects scourge strike as well and Dirge no longer benefits obliterate. It is not clear to me if this will actually change the way unholy dps works. That being said, however, several things make the following spec attractive:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#_CJEhozny1isj6,FQp,10433
Though elitist jerks mentions that this scales better with gear, my ptr tests tell me that it scales really well with the 4 piece bonus as well. Frost fever and blood plague crits are spell crits and so have an extra bonus. Bladed armor will make these dots hit a lot harder: A point to be kept in mind since the role of unholy dps, it seems to me, is AOE damage in the from of wandering plague and a very easy dot spread.
Again, ghoul management comes into play here. Keeping your friendly pet alive is hard without the aid of ghoul frenzy and so in most fights, the ghoul will end up dying.
Unholy dps doesn't gain its 'AOE' status till there are 3 + adds around. A standard aoe rotation with the above spec is of the following form:
Icy Touch - Plague Strike - Pest - Death and Decay - Blood Tap - Blood boil
DCoil DCoil
Repeat.
For Single Target Damage The following becomes priority (a rotation is prescribed but there are hardly any fights with the exception of XT where all you have to do is stand and dps).
1) Keep diseases up (more targets the better; remember the Ebon Plague makes it easier for casters - this may nerf your dps if there are only 2 targets around)
2) Keep Bone Armor up. This is exceptionally irritating this patch: with the one min cool down and one min duration on Bone Armor. It seems as if having Blood tap macro as one would have for unbreakable armor would be useful. The ideal time to use this is right after you have put all your runes on cool down. If you have to spend one GCD with your Runic Power capped for this, consider it well spent.
\cast Blood Tap
\cast Bone Armor
\cancelaura Blood Tap
3) Keep your Runic Power from getting capped - Death Coil should be second on the damage you do and also you get an exceptional crit bonus from spells.
4) Keep your Runes on Cool Down (use Blood Strike and Scourge Strike)
This strategy was very effective for me in SRN raids. Feel free to check out the World of Logs report. The Death Coil damage was as expected. I did not, however, do a very good job of keeping bone armor up on Northrend beasts. On the kill i had a 54.7% uptime on Bone Shield which means a 2 % dps loss for 45.3% of the fight. Some of this may have been unavoidable since using AMS to generate RP gets rid of the charges. Ideally I would want a 70% to 80% up time on Bone Shield. This may be unrealistic. On Jaraxuss, Bone armor was reserved as a survivability cooldown for tanking the infernals.
c) The cooldown for Unbreakable armor is reduced, and also the benefit is now 10% strength for 20 seconds with a cooldown of one min. There is an average 5% strength lost. 25 % str for 20 seconds every 2 min Vs 10 % str for 40 seconds every 2 min. This may be interpreted as a nerf, but its not. First off the 5 % is minor and secondly grim toll / unholy strength / 2 pc bonus are all on a 45 sec - 50 second internal cool down. Popping Unbreakable armor every time its up will result in a boost of dps. The effects of the armor pen nerf to an obliterate focused spec like mine are minor but noticeable. My spreadsheet indicates a 1.2 % damage decrease.
a) The way it seems to me, there are two things which make blood very attractive: the ability to use 2 cooldowns (hysteria and Dancing Rune Weapon) for burst dps and the 2 target cleave. The first nerf diminishes the cleave ability by quite a lot: almost a half.
b) Subversion now effects scourge strike as well and Dirge no longer benefits obliterate. It is not clear to me if this will actually change the way unholy dps works. That being said, however, several things make the following spec attractive:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#_CJEhozny1isj6,FQp,10433
Though elitist jerks mentions that this scales better with gear, my ptr tests tell me that it scales really well with the 4 piece bonus as well. Frost fever and blood plague crits are spell crits and so have an extra bonus. Bladed armor will make these dots hit a lot harder: A point to be kept in mind since the role of unholy dps, it seems to me, is AOE damage in the from of wandering plague and a very easy dot spread.
Again, ghoul management comes into play here. Keeping your friendly pet alive is hard without the aid of ghoul frenzy and so in most fights, the ghoul will end up dying.
Unholy dps doesn't gain its 'AOE' status till there are 3 + adds around. A standard aoe rotation with the above spec is of the following form:
Icy Touch - Plague Strike - Pest - Death and Decay - Blood Tap - Blood boil
DCoil DCoil
Repeat.
For Single Target Damage The following becomes priority (a rotation is prescribed but there are hardly any fights with the exception of XT where all you have to do is stand and dps).
1) Keep diseases up (more targets the better; remember the Ebon Plague makes it easier for casters - this may nerf your dps if there are only 2 targets around)
2) Keep Bone Armor up. This is exceptionally irritating this patch: with the one min cool down and one min duration on Bone Armor. It seems as if having Blood tap macro as one would have for unbreakable armor would be useful. The ideal time to use this is right after you have put all your runes on cool down. If you have to spend one GCD with your Runic Power capped for this, consider it well spent.
\cast Blood Tap
\cast Bone Armor
\cancelaura Blood Tap
3) Keep your Runic Power from getting capped - Death Coil should be second on the damage you do and also you get an exceptional crit bonus from spells.
4) Keep your Runes on Cool Down (use Blood Strike and Scourge Strike)
This strategy was very effective for me in SRN raids. Feel free to check out the World of Logs report. The Death Coil damage was as expected. I did not, however, do a very good job of keeping bone armor up on Northrend beasts. On the kill i had a 54.7% uptime on Bone Shield which means a 2 % dps loss for 45.3% of the fight. Some of this may have been unavoidable since using AMS to generate RP gets rid of the charges. Ideally I would want a 70% to 80% up time on Bone Shield. This may be unrealistic. On Jaraxuss, Bone armor was reserved as a survivability cooldown for tanking the infernals.
c) The cooldown for Unbreakable armor is reduced, and also the benefit is now 10% strength for 20 seconds with a cooldown of one min. There is an average 5% strength lost. 25 % str for 20 seconds every 2 min Vs 10 % str for 40 seconds every 2 min. This may be interpreted as a nerf, but its not. First off the 5 % is minor and secondly grim toll / unholy strength / 2 pc bonus are all on a 45 sec - 50 second internal cool down. Popping Unbreakable armor every time its up will result in a boost of dps. The effects of the armor pen nerf to an obliterate focused spec like mine are minor but noticeable. My spreadsheet indicates a 1.2 % damage decrease.