Unholy DK Alpha Testers, Please Read! (Unholy Legion Discussion)

[Breyers]

Does anybody know if Army of the Damned debuffs apply to World Bosses/Dungeon Bosses/Raid Bosses?

[Nition]

So there's been a bit of discussion that went on in Acherus, and from testing I found that Clawing Shadows is equal to Castigor on everything except single target.
To list things very simply

-In pure patchwork single target Castigor beats Clawing Shadows by ~17k dps.
-The test for aoe was done as 4 target patchwork, which comes out to the same result as Beastlord/Hectic Add Cleave sims. It shows that CS (with SI) vs Castigor (also with SI) are both roughly the same dps.

Now what this overall means, that unless you're on a pure patchwork fight taking either Castigor, or Clawing Shadows is roughly the same outcome.
If you get more Haste/Crit gear, go for Castigor. If you get more Haste/Mastery gear, go for Clawing Shadows. Even from just 2 targets up, Clawing Shadows will match Castigor's dps.

These below are clickable links showing results.

Castigor - Single Target
Clawing Shadows - Single Target

Castigor vs Clawing Shadows - 2 target Patchwork

Castigor vs Clawing Shadows - Castigor was optimized for aoe by Alaiz and I ran all three lvl 90 talents with CS to see the highest.


So all in all, this means that both are very much viable. if you prefer one over the other, go for it and try to get that type of gear.

Personally I will be going with CS, as the range on it generally fits raiding better and eliminates more problems/potential for lost dps than Castigor (obv, imo).

Is there any way to confirm this before all the gearing starts? Don't want to start gearing for mastery to find that clawing shadows isn't viable! :P

Also what ratio of crit to mastery is required to go one way or the other? Say I get a mixture of pieces with mastery and crit. At what point would I swap to one spec or the other?

[Maxweii]

Does anybody know if Army of the Damned debuffs apply to World Bosses/Dungeon Bosses/Raid Bosses?

Why exactly wouldn't they?

[Breyers]

Why exactly wouldn't they?

Wasn't sure, sometimes some skills don't work on raid bosses, or in certain situations (i.e Dark Sim previously)

[Rothulean1]

These long streaks of no Runic Corruption procs I keep getting sure make this spec feel like shit.

That's due to lack of haste and runic tatoos. I'm getting the same thing atm. It gets better. 3/3 Scourge the unbeliever is a big step in the right direction.

[Rooskie1993]

So which t1 talent is best?

I know ebon fever is probably the best for aoe and trash packs in 5 mans but I tried all will serve on bosses and seem to be pulling a bit more dmg especially when I have to move now that I dont have clawing shadows, archers hitting for 20k+ every 1 to 1.5 seconds seems pretty good tbh.

[Beefkow]

These long streaks of no Runic Corruption procs I keep getting sure make this spec feel like shit.

RNG is RNG. Usually when I hit RP cap with a SD proc, I use death strike to dump my RP. Doing so would increase your chances on proccing RC.

Like I said, RNG is RNG. I can get no RC for days or chain RC back to back.

[Maxweii]

That's due to lack of haste and runic tatoos. I'm getting the same thing atm. It gets better. 3/3 Scourge the unbeliever is a big step in the right direction.

Having Scourge the Unbeliever on trash packs in dungeons is silly. Since each target hit can proc it you're just swimming in runes.

RNG is RNG. Usually when I hit RP cap with a SD proc, I use death strike to dump my RP. Doing so would increase your chances on proccing RC.

Like I said, RNG is RNG. I can get no RC for days or chain RC back to back.

When I'm questing I basically ignore DC and just use death strike since you have so much runic. Doesn't hurt that it's healing you as well

[Beefkow]

When I'm questing I basically ignore DC and just use death strike since you have so much runic. Doesn't hurt that it's healing you as well

It does more damage than DC, sadly. With shadow infusion and SoW specced, DC is still a viable button to press. But like I said, I'll only use DS if I am caught on a full RP pool and SD.

At this point, I really love dark succor, free death strikes are nice to have! Not for the heals but for another shot at the lottery.

[wooootles]

I haven't gotten to the high mastery or artifact talents that buff/benefit Death Coil yet, but man does that ability suck. In a world that everyone has 100+k damage abilties on rotation this resource dumper hits for 30k. Yeah, Death Strike has higher damage and may be better to use on rotation (at this point) than DC, as it's easier to dump with its higher RP cost. I feel like I'm wasting GCD just firing limp dick death coils, and sometimes I even tend to ignore the RP cap in a burst AoE situation where I'm firing away DnD'd Clawing Shadows and/or epidemic.

Anyone else in the same scenario? I also run SR so there are times that I just get so much haste (in a small window of time) that I actually want to use as much damaging abilities as I can in that time frame.

[Target2]

I am at 18% crit and 63% Mastery and I'm using Castigator. Would I get more DPS from Clawing Shadows with this much Mastery?

[Maxweii]

I haven't gotten to the high mastery or artifact talents that buff/benefit Death Coil yet, but man does that ability suck. In a world that everyone has 100+k damage abilties on rotation this resource dumper hits for 30k. Yeah, Death Strike has higher damage and may be better to use on rotation (at this point) than DC, as it's easier to dump with its higher RP cost. I feel like I'm wasting GCD just firing limp dick death coils, and sometimes I even tend to ignore the RP cap in a burst AoE situation where I'm firing away DnD'd Clawing Shadows and/or epidemic.

Anyone else in the same scenario? I also run SR so there are times that I just get so much haste (in a small window of time) that I actually want to use as much damaging abilities as I can in that time frame.

Unholy is overflowing with resources at 110, people mentioned it from beta a bunch here but it's finally getting its light now that people are hitting higher artifact levels.
However with that said DC getting a damage boost much higher than the artifact will raise it is unlikely. It does hit for a 'decent' amount, and also gives 10 energy to the ghoul. It's just that like you said in AoE or such its the lowest of priorities.

I am at 18% crit and 63% Mastery and I'm using Castigator. Would I get more DPS from Clawing Shadows with this much Mastery?

The best answer is to sim it out yourself, however just from a glance at your stats it sounds it might do you better as you're close to what my stats are.

[AzriellNoamuth]

I was actually about to ask about death coil. I've noticed an actual dps loss when casting it when I have literally anything other ability I could be pressing. Tried to do the whole 'death coil when over 80 rp' thing and it seemed my damage was going down. With all of the stuff that is supposed to synergise with it (pet energy, runic corruption, scourge of the worlds, double doom) it really makes me wonder why it feels so useless in our rotation outside of already having every rune on cooldown. Does anyone have better input on its use outside of the wowhead/ IV guides?

[Gleipnir]

I've been to the ends of the earth to try and find some information on BiS neck enchants and yet all I find is dust. Does anyone have *real* concrete math and information how the procs works for each of the three top enchants? Mark of the Distant Army, Hidden Satyr and Claw. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone, Icy and Wowhead, although written by the best of the best, have as much information as an intern writing a noxxic page, and the Discord channel is filled with people's anecdotes, not the actual data.

[Maxweii]

I was actually about to ask about death coil. I've noticed an actual dps loss when casting it when I have literally anything other ability I could be pressing. Tried to do the whole 'death coil when over 80 rp' thing and it seemed my damage was going down. With all of the stuff that is supposed to synergise with it (pet energy, runic corruption, scourge of the worlds, double doom) it really makes me wonder why it feels so useless in our rotation outside of already having every rune on cooldown. Does anyone have better input on its use outside of the wowhead/ IV guides?

Your dps will naturally dip up and down depending on crits, abilties used, ect. If you're following basic logic for the scenario you're in, casting DC won't be a "noticeable" dps loss as it's well, part of what you're supposed to do.

I've been to the ends of the earth to try and find some information on BiS neck enchants and yet all I find is dust. Does anyone have *real* concrete math and information how the procs works for each of the three top enchants? Mark of the Distant Army, Hidden Satyr and Claw. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone, Icy and Wowhead, although written by the best of the best, have as much information as an intern writing a noxxic page, and the Discord channel is filled with people's anecdotes, not the actual data.

Claw is striaghtforward, just procs it's Haste/Crit proc for 6 seconds. Distant Army is a proc where some arrows come down and do X damage (believe that it's considered physical damage, not sure), Hidden Satyr is just a nightmare bolt (it's a Fire type spell and can crit).
Best info you can find is just slap it on your character in simcraft. I know if you go Clawing Shadows you take Hidden Satyr, and if you go for Castigator you go for Mark of the Claw. There's not much "more" than that though.

[ShiyoKozuki]

I usually run UF because it provides me more SD procs but AA damage is absolute garbage atm. I did get to test it on the lvl 110 pvp test realm (890 ilvl as avg), hit the target dummy and my AAs are usually on the top 3. Basically AA will actually hit harder as gear progresses.

Necrosis is great, but it conflicts with our rotation entirely. Basically using 2 coils in a row just hurts me knowing that I didn't get to use that one necrosis stack. If I want to dump my RP ASAP I'll have to use death strike, which happens to do more damage than DC with a higher % chance of proccing runic corruption. Our GCD is so long we don't have the time to dump all of our DCs, it does little to no damage.

As of right now, UF is actually decent for lvling because of lack of haste and SD procs. Then of course as soon as you pick runic tattoos, your rotation will smooth out or if you decided to go double doom, you will be flooded with almost infinite DCs. Which is good since you can combo that with DA spamming DS as you please knowing that DC is free most of the time.

My question was asked before I got scourge of worlds.

Scourge of worlds makes necrosis awkward, clunky, unfun and bad.

Unholy frenzy is bad without necrosis IMO so there's really no point to those two talents. Need a massive buff/change to necrosis to make it acutally worth taking.

[Deleted]

I also think that when flooded with resources sit on DC unless you can spam it to get pet CD down fast

Dungeon fights don't often translate well into raid performance though

[Maxweii]

My question was asked before I got scourge of worlds.

Scourge of worlds makes necrosis awkward, clunky, unfun and bad.

Unholy frenzy is bad without necrosis IMO so there's really no point to those two talents. Need a massive buff/change to necrosis to make it acutally worth taking.

Necrosis doesn't need a buff to be worth taking. Already it's very very competitive compared to the other talents on that row, I believe in single target it's actually slightly better than the others. It just doesn't invoke a good feel or playstyle though and has more room for error/misplays than the other, and as such is why it sims higher than it does in game.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Necrosis doesn't need a buff to be worth taking. Already it's very very competitive compared to the other talents on that row, I believe in single target it's actually slightly better than the others. It just doesn't invoke a good feel or playstyle though and has more room for error/misplays than the other, and as such is why it sims higher than it does in game.

I don't see how it's that great, don't you want to spam death coils for scourge of world procs then scourge strike when it's up? By taking necrosis you neglect either scourge of worlds or necrosis.

[Maxweii]

I don't see how it's that great, don't you want to spam death coils for scourge of world procs then scourge strike when it's up? By taking necrosis you neglect either scourge of worlds or necrosis.

It just means that when you have Necrosis you DC>SS every time to use that Necrosis proc. If it procs SoW as well, awesome it's even more damage. That's kind of obvious, because spamming DC with Necrosis is a loss.