4.0.6 – Quick Thoughts
January 13, 2011 65 Comments
This week has just been killing me, and I promise some in-depth writing/math this weekend, but to answer some of the questions I’m seeing asked a lot, I figured I would throw up this quick post. I hate making statements without support, but I do promise I’m fully confident of all the following, and simply don’t have the time to get into the “why’s” now, although, as said, Saturday and/or Sunday, it will definitely be done:
- DW Unholy is undoubtedly dead. No question, and hopefully no explanation needed.
- DnD is still a fundamental part of our Unholy single target rotation; in fact, it’s a larger dps gain than ever. Mastery and Rage of Rivendare see to it. Speaking of…
- Unholy mastery is still bad. As bad as it was? No, of course not, but worse than crit/expertise, which is all that matters – it means we’ll avoid it as much as ever. The core issue is the ghoul; if, theoretically, it affected him, or if, theoretically, our ghoul didn’t exist, the stat would be perfectly desirable. As is, it isn’t… not to mention the DC/RoR nerfs coinciding at the same time don’t really help.
- Our Frost AoE dps got nerfed, precisely how it needed to be done – with no affect on single target performance. A+.
- Our 2H Frost single-target dps got a huge buff; enough to make it worth looking into, although I think it should still fall a percent or two behind the other specs… a minor gap, in the scheme of things, but enough for min-maxers to ignore it all the same.
- Our Unholy AoE dps is more or less unchanged. The new mastery plus Virulence basically balance out the loss of the old mastery and the reduction in ghoul dps.
- Our Unholy single-target DPS got hit, and rather hard at that. DC nerfed by 10%, SI/DT nerfed by 20%, RoR nerfed by 20%, Unholy Might nerfed by 50%, disease damage nerfed by ~10%, the Magic Suppression nerf, and so on… yeah. The new mastery and the Runic Corruption buff don’t even begin to outweigh all of that. There’s much to be said about this, but I would argue Blizzard slightly overdid it, and will support that position with some maths, as promised, later. Did we need a slight nerf? Yeah, definitely. UM, SI, and DT would have probably been sufficient on their own. The DC and RoR changes on top of it was just unnecessary, and pushes the pendulum of balance to the other end of the spectrum.
- Magic Suppression 3/3 is essentially a must now… which really, really sucks, since with the RC change, we would actually like a point in RPM. Perhaps it will be worth drawing from IBT, but I’m not certain yet. Whatever else, say hello to 0 choice in our spec once again, beyond that one point floating in t1/2! Would have loved to see the PvE applications of Death’s Advance as well. Alas.
Anyways, off to crash, but just some minor things I wished to address.
Consider This... 
I had hoped it wouldn’t work out as harsh as all that, but I did fear it.
I guess being ahead of the pures is enough to justify a heavy nerf in the eyes of blizzard. Problem is, this is sure to put us below several other hybrid specs. Given how difficult our priority system is to pull off for the difference in dps, I would have liked to retain a dominating stance.
Give us the worse Consider; is this the SS hotfix all over again? Top dps to below average in one fell swoop?
Oh dear. Worse than Crit/Expertise still? Would simply buffing the coefficient be enough to rectify that without breaking other things? And our DPS was hit too hard after all?
Grim news, Consider. =(
like he, and i, said before.. the biggest problem with any mastery that doesn’t affect our pet’s damage is that all the other stats save expertise DO scale to the pet.
(well not crit, not yet.. it may get fixed one day)
This is the same problem that plagued hunters and warlocks for a long time. How much damage should a pet do? If it is not enough people won’t care about keeping their pet alive, if it is too much it runs the risk of the pet being more dangerous than that actual PC, which is a pvp no-no. .
I find it funny that unholy gets the mobility “buffs” when they always had a pet munching on someone and stronger diseases, whereas frost (which doesn’t have that, and relatively weak diseases) got nothing, and dpses in frost presence.
I agree. This definitely seems to be a bit too much of a nerf specifically to single target. Hopefully this is just the starting point and they will work us back up a little before the patch goes live.
I thought pets were still not affected by crit rating?
Our pets still do too much a percent of our damage anyway.
My rough guess is that mastery will affect about 35-40% of our single target damage, with the magical part of SS doing hitting about as hard as the physical part.
If those numbers stand up then I think mastery will end up being close to crit rating which effects like 75% of our dps, but has a smaller effect.
Blizzard overcompensating? Nah, couldn’t be. They’d never. (To ballpark, remember AMZ 30sec -> 10sec)
Actually if i were a Blizzard lead/exec I’d be proud of my folks having learned some restraint.
It’s amusing how chipper certain forums are about the mastery change. Yeah, it’s cool. But I’m very inclined at this point to go with my gut: it’s isn’t good it’s just less bad. (But overall buff to my fav spell, DC! Woo! Actual point to SS doing shadow damage! Hey now!)
Also enjoying this whole single-target DnD thing. DnD has a long history of awesome, and if it didn’t hit like a truck, this would be the first incarnation to do so. That it’s good on single targets reinforces truckness. Is that extra tick due to haste scaling, isn’t it? Kind of an odd choice to let DnD haste scale but not diseases.
Did the math on the howling blast nerf:
10k crit on 5 targets:
Live:
10*5= 50k
PTR:
10+(6*4)= 34k
Dont seems like a hughe nerf TBH.
I would have thought the RoR, DC and Disease nerfs would be cancelled out by the new mastery.
If you look at diseases you have, right now you have Blood Plague doing 140% damage and Frost Fever doing 140% damage. Assuming you talent 30% increased disease damage (and at base mastery still) after patch you will have Frost Fever doing 130% damage and Blood Plague doing 156% damage (assuming the mastery change is multiplicitive which seems likely). Overall that would leave diseases doing slightly more damage (286% of one disease instead of 280%). Any mastery you have beyond base would reduce the gain here and at some point it would become a loss.
So you have a 16% disease gain at base mastery. One old mastery will add 10% of one disease worth of damage now (5% each for two diseases), one new mastery will add 3.25% of one disease worth of damage after patch. The break even point then would be at just over 1 mastery from gear so it would be a slight loss for most DKs.
Death Coil damage gets nerfed by 10% but again gets buffed 20% by mastery, overall it should be up about 8%.
If we take the 65% of physical as shadow for Scourge strike figure then this number would increase by 20% for a gain of 13%. So right now you have 100% phys plus 65% shadow. After this physical should be down (to 136 / 145 = 93.8%) of what it is now with the shadow portion increasing by 20% giving a total SS of 93.8 + (93.8 * 0.65 * 1.2) = 166.94% of what it is now, leaving Scourge Strike damage slightly up on what it is now, even at base mastery. With the 2 or so mastery from best in slot gear your scourge strike would actually be at 93.8 + (93.8 * 0.65 * 1.3) = 173.06% of the physical.
Festering strike damage will be down to 93.8% of what it is now
.
Ghoul damage will be down, I would guess about 9% overall.
So you should see:
Frost Fever – down
Blood Plague – up
Total disease – up
Death coil – up
Scourge Strike – up
Necrotic Strike – down
Death and Decay – up
Ghoul damage – down
This of course assumes that the patch notes are complete and that everything works as listed there which is of course a rather big assumption.
Then all of these will in turn come down because of the Unholy Might nerf.
On the other hand, the runic corruption stacking is going to be a damage increase, since right now most people are probably wasting either Sudden Doom procs or some Runic Corruption uptime. It is the kind of change I would imagine the sims will eveluate as no change but in practice most DKs will gain some DPS from it. Looking at the top 5 unholy parses on Chimaeron you have (between all 5 DKs) a total of 124 Runic Corruption procs with an uptime of 345.9 seconds. Full uptime for that amount of procs would be 372 seconds so that is about 5.2 more seconds of uptime each would see. It is also possible that you would have an extra sudden doom proc or two if there are a few wasted procs while DKs wait out their runic corruption timers.
Then there is also the normalisation of Sudden Doom procs, it will depend on what weapon speed they normalise around but it seems likely that 3.6 speed would be the current 15% which should give people with 3.8 speed weapons slightly more procs.
How much all these add up to is hard to say, if the runic corruption and sudden doom proc changes just add up to 1 extra scourge strike and one extra death coil per fight thats an additional 1-2% increase in how much damage those abilities do per fight.
Lastly I’m also not sure how a 1/3 reduction in the runic power generation from AMS would take it from a 1/3 to a 3/3 talent. Even with the nerf shouldn’t you generate more runic power at 2/3 post patch than you do at 1/3 now?
Obviously the unholy might change is a nerf to everything but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the other stuff add up to break even or maybe even a slight buff.
I have to assume the AMS nerf is largely pvp related. At the moment with a set of dots on you, AMS can turn you into a Deathcoil machine gun for quite a few globals. The head scratcher is the fact that most pvp specs will take AMZ anyway.. so I would guess there is still a large RP gain to be had. Its probably intended to assist the dot classes, so they don’t feel like dotting up an unholy DK is suicide. The pve implications are less severe, but as consider says.. annoying because it forces our spec to be more inflexible instead.
Personally, for progression, I have ditched IBT anyway in favour of AMZ.
I have to assume the AMS nerf is largely pvp related. At the moment with a set of dots on you, AMS can turn you into a Deathcoil machine gun for quite a few globals.
I believe that’s correct. The moment I read the change, I thought “PVP nerf”. With 3 points in AMS you can get more than a full of RP bar in not time which essentially means DC spam on the target–> Very fast DT. Probably makes AMS more useful than ever in a PVP environment.
Not to mention that, under certain circumstances you get enough RP to Heal yourself with Lichborne and throw a couple of DCs to your enemies.
The AMS nerf is because of the new Runic Corruption mechanic.
uh, what?
You’ll have to explain your logic there, since the two are only very loosely related.
As you said, Jonneh, said, proper timing of AMS can turn you into a Death Coil machine gun for the duration. And whenever you hit Death Coil, that’s a 1 in 2 chance to get Runic Corruption.
Lets say that you hit AMS during something like, say, Omega Stance on Anraphet in HoO. You’ve capped out Magic Suppression, so every second you end up runic power capped. So assuming you don’t have points in RPM, that’s runic power for at least 9 death coils (7 during and 2 from the remaining RP afterward), of which 4-5 will proc Runic Corruption, meaning that once every 45 sec during the fight, your runes gain up to 15 sec of 100% increased speed. And that’s before you even factor in Sudden Doom procs, Shadow Infusion stacking…
At least… that’s what I would assume PennyRush meant. It would make sense, given the timing of it all…
The only problem with that is… this change isn’t going to prevent that. You’re still only limited by the duration of the aoe, and the damage it does relative to how much HP you have. Something that ticks for 20k every couple of seconds is still going to cap you and let you do that, so I don’t really see the nerf working to prevent that.. other than the fact it requires you to have 3 points in the talent ofc.
[18:15:15.346] Magmatron Incineration Security Measure Jonneh Absorb (12077)
[18:15:15.516] Jonneh’s Sudden Doom fades from Jonneh
[18:15:15.753] Jonneh gains Runic Corruption from Jonneh
[18:15:16.101] Jonneh gains 88 runic power from Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell
[18:15:16.101] Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell is refreshed by Jonneh (Remaining: 100)
[18:15:16.101] Magmatron Incineration Security Measure Jonneh Absorb (13351)
[18:15:16.917] Jonneh gains 97 runic power from Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell
[18:15:17.346] Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell is refreshed by Jonneh (Remaining: 100)
[18:15:17.346] Magmatron Incineration Security Measure Jonneh Absorb (11735)
[18:15:17.734] Jonneh gains Sudden Doom from Jonneh
[18:15:18.118] Jonneh gains 85 runic power from Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell
[18:15:18.145] Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell is refreshed by Jonneh (Remaining: 100)
[18:15:18.145] Magmatron Incineration Security Measure Jonneh Absorb (11771)
[18:15:18.524] Jonneh’s Sudden Doom fades from Jonneh
[18:15:18.751] Jonneh’s Runic Corruption fades from Jonneh
[18:15:18.922] Jonneh gains 86 runic power from Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell
[18:15:18.922] Jonneh gains Runic Corruption from Jonneh
[18:15:19.731] Jonneh’s Runic Corruption is refreshed by Jonneh
[18:15:20.514] Jonneh gains Efflorescence from Fortyfour
[18:15:20.536] Zargor Holy Radiance Jonneh +0 (O: 720)
[18:15:20.952] Jonneh’s Anti-Magic Shell fades from Jonneh (Remaining: 100)
So “The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third.” means I’d get 62 RP per second on that aoe, instead of 85. That is with 3/3.
Still enough to cap, spam and as you can see, proc RC twice!
As Jonneh pointed out, it’s not that much a PVE change as a PVP one. Yes it has implications there too but most of the times there’s so much damage involved in PVE absorbs that you will be a DC machine-gun anyway.
In PVP, AMS is huge nowadays. With the current AMS you can easily destroy casters, except Frost Mages, as if it’s an IWIN button with a 1-min cooldown. Sure it’s still the AMS we’ve all known all this time but never before did it give you an Ultra-powerful ghoul or good healing, in an expansion where healing actually matters.
It’s like, due to the changes in this expansion, AMS’ value increased.
I noted today on top of this btw that a 4k dot gave me 36 RP!
So we’re looking at a ~5.3k dps dot/aoe to cap us with 3/3 as of 4.0.6. Slightly more to build up a full RP bar to spam away at the end. Something to ponder!
This could a be a change corresponding to the additive nature of runic corruption and the magic absoption mechanic. How much time does all of those DCs add to runic corruption? If we are talking upwards of 30-40 seconds of runic corruption stacking then, well, I think we see the issue of chain usage of AMS to keep runic corruption leads to UH DKs doing very well on certain fights, as opposed to frost, or hell any other dps even.
I’m not sure really, even if you got say 10 DCs in a row out of it, and you procced on every single one, the most you get is 2 seconds per proc, 1 second being wasted as you global the next DC, so you’d be looking at like 20 seconds tops of RC duration with all runes off cooldown at double regen rate. It sounds OP but you’d have to be pretty damn lucky. Though its not beyond the realms of possibility, you still couldn’t chain them together. Would be funny though! As you can see in my paste above, I got 2 procs in the time I was spamming. That seems more likely, up to 4 procs. A nice boost, but not really as overpowered as all that. Would make for some pretty amazing burst DPS though.
I kinda hope it remains useful and that there isn’t anything too OP about it, I’m with Consider in the view that proper use of AMS is one of the things that sets apart good and average DKs in pve.
I think you may be overestimating the impact of the later nerfs.
For some quick math assuming 10 mastery :
Death coil is reduced by 10%, but increased by 25%, for a net buff of 12.5%
Scourge Strike is reduced by 6% from RoR, but increased by 8% from the shadow portion going from 12 to 18% and then another 25% for dreadblade* for a 35% net buff.
Festering Strike and Plague Strike both get a 1.45/1.36 or 6% nerf.
Icy Touch unaffected
Disease goes from 5 * mastery +100 per disease , or 300% of base disease damage, to 2.5 * mastery + 130 for BP and 130 for FF, total of 285% base disease damage, or a 5% nerf.
Ghoul gets a 110->108 or 2% nerf which scales up to a 200->180 or 10% nerf, average nerf value somewhere in between.
* Dreadblade doesn’t affect scourge strike shadow on ptr atm, but I am assuming this is a bug rather than intentional.
Running these modifiers against some of my recent parses, the net result is a damage *buff*, albeit a minor one, leaving the UM, SD and AMS changes as the only real nerfs. Speaking of which, unless you have some insider info on what the proc per minute is supposed to be for the new sudden doom, any evaluation of how nerfed it is, or even if it’s nerfed at all for 2H seems premature, especially given it does not work at all on ptr currently.
EJ is reporting SD being bugged and not procing at all atm.
The SS buff isn’t quite that simple because the 6% buff is based off the physical dmg which has been nerfed, in short it is roughly a 5% buff rather than 10% as you suggested.
On my own point your PTR first glance says that MotFW will have a 4/8/12% chance to proc from melee attacks, this was a MMO champion error, the actual change is 4/8/12% damage to melee attacks (there are 2 posts 3h apart which state the different changes).
If you assume that F 2h is 10% behind F DW (which is relatively unchanged, however we might be taking virulence) and that 88% (12% being distributed between HB and diseases) of your damage is melee attacks then F 2h comes out 0.5% infront of F DW.
Appologies if you were aware of the change, just you haven’t edited the previous post.
Not quite on the Frost math. If 2H is 10% behind DW and the MotFW buff affects, say, 85% of their damage (all but HB, FF, and BP), then (.9*.15)+(.9*.85*1.12)=0.9918, still behind by slightly less than a percent. Even if you bump HB/FF/BP to 88% (which is probably unfair with the new virulence, which Frost might be interested in), that’s still (.9*.12)+(.9*.88*1.12)=0.995, half a percent behind.
Very close though, just not close enough for min/maxers, not to mention potential scaling issues.
It will allow one to switch from Unholy to Frost, tho, without having to completely regear/reforge/regem, which is nice.
I’m not so sure that 0.5% – 2% are that much of a diffrence when you have the chance to run around in unholy presence. The run-speed is one of the things I miss most when playing as dw frost (my raid sucks at magmaw’s lava parasites ..) not to mention that you don’t have to avoid either haste or mastery like it is the case with dw frost or unholy, because they are both within a reasonable range for 2h frost.
The biggest issue I see with the current spec balance is that the ghoul is just way to powerful when it comes to movement fights (hello t11 raidcontent) and mastery will probably be still on the lower end of the stat ranking. One of the main issues I have with the 2h frost buff is that it might lead to rp capping and it’s just a pita during haste increasing phases. I wish they had just increased strike dmg for 2h frost or added a bit of frost dmg to them to make up for the better dw scaling, but more rp smells like problems in the near future.
Anyway I can’t wait till we have the actual numbers as soon as we know which of these changes will stick. At least there is hope that we will see some kind of actual balance among the specs afterwards. 🙂
Even if one gets DC, SS, Mastery, RoR, diseases, ghoul, etc, all cancelling each other out (which I would – and will – disagree with, but don’t have the time to show now), you still can’t write off UM, which on its own is at least a 3% dps hit, if not closer to 4-5%.
As to SD, I don’t believe I commented on it – mistyped SI as SD, but corrected! I assume it will end up being the same proc-rate, more or less.
So just wondering, based on this simple maths which people are doing, will 2H Unholy still be the #1 option for pre-HMs? Or is DW/2H Frost likely to begin to out-damage it?
Well Blizzard seems a bit random they are totaly ignoring the fact that even after the Unholy nerf the DPS will still be skyhigh compared to frost dw / 2h on every encounter i hope they take a look in that..
I don’t think so.. With the UM nerf, the DPS is already a good 3-5% drop. Factor in the DT nerf, the DC nerf, and the fact that so far Dreadblade isn’t buffing ScS and I presume UH is close to Frost DW. Frost 2H is probably closer to the gap of Frost DW with MoTFW buff.
I’m not good with numbers, but Unholy’s dropping… I’d say about 10% DPS total.
How far is the gap between 2H Unholy and DW Frost?
from what i remember, it was only like 1-2% if that….. between 2h UH and DW Frost…but with the pet able to attack when your not able to, makin your avg possibly slightly higher, so maby 3%? – sure are heck not 10% – maby 2H Unholy will be competitve with 2H Frost now! WEEEee! (Sigh)
So what does this do to the balance of specs? Given that Frost DW has been relatively unchanged, and 2H is almost on a par with that now, and UH appears to have received an almighty whack with the nerf stick, will this make Frost the top single target spec now?
Well before mastery the shadow part of SS should hit for 1.5 times as much as it used to due to the disease scaling being increased by that factor. I had a quick look at some of the top DPS logs for 25 man BH and at present the shadow part hits for about 63% of the physical part, so the new version should hit for almost as much as the physical part. That alone is over a 19% boost to the damage. The RoR nerf is about a 6% loss, and the Unholy might is less than a 5% nerf due to the base damage on most of our abilities. The new mastery has a base value of 40% without any rating, so that pushes up the shadow part considerably. Overall, I get the new SS hitting overall about 1.6 times as hard as the current one, without any mastery rating.
Thus SS should be hitting harder, and that’s before mastery, and with the base mastery
Uh… Isn’t Dreadblade a 20% base value?
And you’re forgetting that the ghoul is also 10-30% of our DPS pre-patch…
Ah yeah dreadblade is only 20%.
I’m not concerned too much with our overall dps, that can be relatively easily tweaked with a change such as the unholy might change.
Yes our ghoul dps will be majorly nerfed and it problably should be, although changing the GoRD to something else might be the best way to accomplish that.
Seems to be alot of conflicting information here, hope to see some info from Consider soon.
You know, in a weird way… they’ve kinda gave us back necrosis. More effective, but just as boring.
I don’t see us getting passive shadow damage from our auto-attack at all.
Just increased shadow damage.
It’s not like the old mastery, beside beeing worthless, was a lot of fun anyway.
I see Unholy still clearly ahead of Frost.
Right now, everything suggests that singletarget, Unholy is about 10-15% ahead of Frost ANYWAYS. The nerfs will hut UH, but i suspect more in a way like 3-4 % overall (i have been reconsidering all changes without the change to Runic Corruption).
I wouldn’t be too surprised, if it comes down to a 2% nerf only (with some damage shifted from the ghoul to the player himself).
And that would imo clearly put Unholy ahead of Frost. Frost is lacking a lot of burst compared to unholy.
Id on’t know if there’s any fix to runes. That could bring frost a lot closer to unholy but i haven’t tested it yet.
With a Ghoul nerf, 5% strength, RoR nerf, and magic suppression nerf, how can even the buffs make up for that, i could see all the buffs making up for maybe the 5% but the rest i dont think so. Hopefully some concrete math soon but i think it may be a bit more than only a 2% nerf.
It’s a pretty simple math.
Without the UM Nerf i would expect:
SSphys -7%
DC +12%
Melee +0
SSshadow +60%
FF -14%
BP +8%
FesteringStrike -7%
Ghoul -10% (should be less!)
Implementing everything into my Artramedes Stats, i end up with a 1% DPS gain(!). Implementing the UM nerf, i end up getting a 4% nerf before the Runic Corruption change. Everything suggests that this will end up being close to +-0%.
Assuming SSShadow isn’t going to be affected by mastery, i get a 3% nerf (thats the number i am referring to).
And if you try it, Kahorie shows a DPS gain with all the 4.0.6 changes implemented. There could be a bugg, but i think a lot of people are underestimating the Runic Corruption change.
Well, now. That pretty much sums it up, more or less, although I don’t see the RC change being that notable. You have to understand, the sim isn’t that smart. It won’t sit on RP/space out DCs, even when DT is up, to maximize RC uptime – something a real player should know to do. That said, it also won’t pool RP for when DT is about to end, and then unload 3 DCs (which will, of course, be perfectly optimal next patch). Eh.
I suppose a 5% gain from it isn’t that unrealistic, which would balance the rest out (in a vacuum, anyways).
I hope SS shadow is going to be included in this mastery change. It has felt like a rejected offspring since that black day. Oh that black.. black day 😦
I would be very, very surprised if the shadow portion was (intentionally) excluded from the mastery. In fact, that would be one of the most illogical things they would have done with SS yet, and that’s saying a lot!
Patiently awaiting your math on this, Consider!
Finding it hard to argue much with Sahlia’s numbers above. The RC change is hard to figure out, but I assume he is saying from his post that it should somehow make up for a 4% dps loss?
I find that hard to value. Assuming the new way to do things would be to store up RP ready to stack SI in the preceding 4-6 globals before DT drops, then spam out the DCs you would likely benefit from those few procs concurrently instead of overwriting them. I have to admit I have fallen into this habit already. Is that really enough to make up for; what? 6-800dps? I guess its not beyond the realm of possibility, but too hard for me to math out at 5am.
In any case, if it ended up being 3-5% down.. I think I could live with that. Though it’d put us below some other specs, I assume we’re supposed to be below the pures anyway.
The mathy anonymous comments above were actually from me.
The ghoul nerf will probably end up about 20% of the ghoul damage.
SS magical will definitely be boosted by mastery, or they wouldn’t have bothered changing it.
Overall mastery should be comparable to the other secondary stats in a single target fight or there was no real point in changing it.
One issue i have with unholy is the insanely high value of strength compared to the other stats. However playing with the sim, that’s almost purely due to the strength scaling of the ghoul. The ghoul nerfs will reduce that a bit, but they should reconsider exactly what the glyph of raise dead does.
Explain to me why the ghoul should be a 20% nerf.
Our empowered Ghoul got a 100% buff, now it’s 80%. Which means the DPS drops from 200% to 180%, which means a 10% nerf (though a very little less due to ghoul being a dew seconds umempowered).
So it comes down to say 9.8% or whatsoever, which can be assumed to be 10%.
I compared my values by the way with the values of my Artramedes log. Without the UM nerf, i even got a DPS buff. And the change to RC will definitely be a buff because sometimes you just had bad luck with proccs.
Got my 3rd EJ infraction for using a few dots in suspenseful sentance today… beware!
When will the hard-headedness end
I never tend to post at EJ anymore- I just use it as a reference if anything. Wished there was a community for DK DPS like pwnwear
I don’t understand. The ghoul nerf is 20%, and if the average ghoul total damage accounted around 30%, wouldn’t the overall nerf be around 6%? And wouldn’t the new mastery be better than crit/expertise? I had always assumed shadow damage accounted about 40-45% of our total damage, and according to most of the people here, the shadow damage portion of our overall just got a nice buff. Assuming the changes go through, I would have figured haste and mastery were the secondary stats to go for.
Also, to my understanding, our zombie is suppose to benefit from crit but doesn’t. That alone should put mastery ahead. If we assume it does, it still is unlikely to surpass expertise until future tiers (as noted by Consider’s EJ post). Well until Blizzard fixes our pet and we’re into future tiers, I immediately assumed mastery was the way to go.
Does the math really prove that mastery still is not that desirable?
With the blood boil change and mastery change to unholy, I wonder if unholy and frost arn’t simply changing places on the aoe ladder. The new mastery still affects blood plague quite nicely, and the boosts to death and decay and blood boil will be quite significant too.
Consider, I recall you mentioning on a twitter or something that blood dps would be rather decent if not for the threat. That was before the spec got the wrath of god buff to heart strike, a main source of damage for a blood spec., in addition to quite large buffs to DS and RS.
Would you consider this possibly becoming the best spec for fights that aggro is meaningless? (Heroic wind platform conclave etc?)
Would people please stop saying it’s a 20% nerf to Ghoul damage? It’s just plain wrong. It’s a 20% nerf to the damage bonus which made up half of the Ghouls total damage.
It’s a 10% nerf (plus the Strength nerf) period.
This.
Anyone with a simple calculator (even the one on your computer) just has to punch in 180 / 200 = 0.9, as in 90% of original damage THUS a 10% nerf before Unholy Might.
Silly people.
It is not quite that simple either though.
It is a 0% nerf at 0 stacks of buff on ghoul.
It is a 1.9% nerf at 1 stack of buff on ghoul.
It is a 3.3% nerf at 2 stacks of buff on ghoul.
It is a 4.6% nerf at 3 stacks of buff on ghoul.
It is a 5.7% nerf at 4 stacks of buff on ghoul.
It is a 6.7% nerf at 5 stacks of buff on ghoul.
It is a 10% nerf once DT is active.
The final amount of the nerf will depend on how long your ghoul spends in each of those states in the fight, if you have high DT uptime the nerf is bigger. Finally you have to factor in that stacking runic power before DT fades and spamming death coils to get it back up is no longer costing you DPS through lost runic empowerment procs which will gain you back some dps if done correctly.
I suspect you are looking somewhere around 8% total damage loss from ghoul.
with the rc change, its pretty much assumed your pet will never have 0 stacks, since you’ll save up RP ready to re-buff it asap when DT drops.
But yes, 10% is the conservative estimate.
Off Topic: Trinkets: Heroic Heart of Solace is BIS pre raid I recall, I also have Heroic Right Eye of Rajh and Epic Tol Borad Trinkit Impatience of Youth. My question is between Eye and Impatience which is better? And does the chance to proc from Eye share a internal cooldown with Solace?
Thanks, Dont trust the wisdowm of any normal message boards 🙂
If you’re only hitcapped with the Eye, then it’s the Eye. If you can get hitcapped with the rest of your gear without reforging too much (you wouldn’t want to trade up a stat like Crit or Haste just to get Mastery in the long run after all), then Impatience.
That, and I personally dislike on-use trinkets.
And I doubt that the Heart shares an ICD with the Eye since they don’t share the same activating conditions (the Eye only procs on crits). 😛
Our Nefarian kill, from my PoV. Its just slung up on youtube with no editing and just random music from the youtube audioswap facility.
Used my garg method, waiting until the end of pot/heroism and popping it with UF for the 50% haste. Its hard to see if its worth it because the damn thing did 50k worth of melee :@ World of Logs
[21:25:08.225] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3697
[21:25:09.026] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:10.642] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:11.034] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10472
[21:25:12.392] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 2466
[21:25:12.528] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10472
[21:25:13.272] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3696
[21:25:13.856] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:15.616] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3708
[21:25:15.742] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10453
[21:25:16.254] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:17.852] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:18.223] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10481
[21:25:19.470] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:19.752] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10443
[21:25:21.233] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3008
[21:25:21.360] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10443
[21:25:21.869] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:23.655] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3714
[21:25:23.755] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10472
[21:25:24.514] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 2775
[21:25:25.403] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3712
[21:25:25.491] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:27.269] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 2527
[21:25:27.385] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10444
[21:25:27.491] Ebon Gargoyle begins to cast Gargoyle Strike
[21:25:29.251] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3695
[21:25:29.364] Ebon Gargoyle Gargoyle Strike Nefarian 10443
[21:25:30.151] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3724
[21:25:31.015] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3727
[21:25:31.883] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3719
[21:25:32.785] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3714
[21:25:33.663] Ebon Gargoyle hits Nefarian 3702
:@ :@ :@ :@
Huge bosses with hitboxes so large you can’t even twist the garg :<
made an official post, again..
Is there any information about how close unholy will be to DW frost.
Can’t wait for this week end. Thanks for your hard work.
Okey, maybe this isen’t the right spot to ask but. Ive been reading on EJ wich says “Strength > Hit to cap > Haste > Mastery > Expertise to cap > Crit”. And so there were some recomended links on the forums that took me here. Thus i read on this post “Unholy mastery is still bad. As bad as it was? No, of course not, but worse than crit/expertise, which is all that matters – it means we’ll avoid it as much as ever.”
Ive been farming all the BiS items in heroics (pre-raid) and been stacking the items with HASTE and MASTERY as main stats… Ignoring expertiese wich literaly is at 0 atm. All my crit I reforge to haste prio 1 or mastery if it’s allready taken. So how is this… Should i insdead cap expertiese before worring about Mastery at all? And after expertiese CRIT is ALWAYS better than MASTERY?
Thanks in advance ~ Gorix