PTR Build 24026 Unholy Changes

[Spamor]

Just tested the t20 on the ptr:

- The buff triggers when the ghoul is summoned
- Works with Apo 18sec dmg buff.
- So the duration of the buff is 6sec, 11 sec, 16sec, 20 sec on AotD
- CD of AotD is about 2:30min (low haste gear) with the set

[Deleted]

There is no way aotd will go live with a 2.5 min cd

[Noxinator]

#42 Why not? Unholy needs some kind of buff to compete with everyone else, this buff to Aotd seems perfectly reasonable

[Deleted]

Don't get me wrong I'd love it on a 2.5 min cd. I'd settle for no other buffs, but this would make unholy very strong and even more fun to play.

Blitz doesn't like such things ;(

[Deleted]

Just tested the t20 on the ptr:

- The buff triggers when the ghoul is summoned
- Works with Apo 18sec dmg buff.
- So the duration of the buff is 6sec, 11 sec, 16sec, 20 sec on AotD
- CD of AotD is about 2:30min (low haste gear) with the set

Any numbers with those? DPS wise?

[TiagoRamos]

Dont forget that those AOTD's wont have the initial BL so...dps will be quite smaller.
But still good boost to dmg with the explosions etc and the debuffs

[garonne]

the unholy tier piece will get nerfed. maybe im jaded but these bonuses are too good.

the 2 piece coupled with army will give 42 secs of 15% increased damage, then 48 secs later we get another 15% damage for 18 secs then another 45 secs we get 15% damage for 24 secs. then another 20-25 secs we get 15% damage for 18 secs. the uptime is ridiculously high for a 2pc. nerf incoming. not to mention ghouls without hero do about 6% of our damage, with the cd redution we're looking at 3 uses for a 6 min fight. i love the tier bonuses but i dont believe this will stay the same throughout TOS. nope, i dont believe it.

[Skjaldborg]

Posted this in the "New Legendary Ring" thread but it's also relevant here:

Given the recent PTR nerf to the Unholy Bracers (Blizz please), do you think this new ring actually surpasses Instructor's Fourth Lesson? Having Bursting Sores AND Ebon Fever is no joke, both talents are really strong.

Basically wondering which of the three pairs is best: Fourth Lesson + KJBW, Fourth Lesson + new ring, or KJBW + new ring. New ring obviously synergizes with Fourth Lesson, but if the 7.2.5 Fourth Lesson still has around a 60% chance to do nothing (like it does on live, to my eternal angst), I'd rather just scrap them.

[Nnyco]

There is no way aotd will go live with a 2.5 min cd

ye because demon hunters 2minute~ 3mil dps meta isnt live either

[Protean]

Thanks for the tip, but that's not what I was talking about, sentence you underscored was to do with AoTD.

Also you don't waste half your SR buff when coupling SR with apoc, you gain globals to continue your necrosis rotation, which is the talent I've taken. You also spend a global casting DT with your suggestion, with no guarantees that your ghoul or say bracers will pop more than one wound.

DT before SR, you don't lose any SR globals, you gain one actually, and by not coupling it with apoc your ghouls also get the full duration.

[Deleted]

I really do appreciate the advice, and I'm sure some have probably learn't from what you've said. I don't personally keep to a strict set of rules with DT. I normally cast DT when I need to eat wounds, normally on CD, sometimes before I cast BRW, sometimes after. There are times it lines up with my SR CD. there are times when SR is cast before or after.

Some fights in Mythic when you're having to spend time away from the boss or to do mechanics, I don't tend to do these "strict" rules. It's the nature of our class.

Thanks for the advice however.

[Spamor]

Drudgery 730k dps over about 5 mins. Using bracers and ring 2231333 talents 905 gs but rotation was rather messed up lag/gimped keybinds

[Deleted]

Drudgery 730k dps over about 5 mins. Using bracers and ring 2231333 talents 905 gs but rotation was rather messed up lag/gimped keybinds

Yeah, sometimes I hate testing on the PTR, the initial setup is atrocious and for some reason it wipes my keybinds when I log back into PTR. I'm gonna try testing on the weekend.

[Sulika]

the unholy tier piece will get nerfed. maybe im jaded but these bonuses are too good.

the 2 piece coupled with army will give 42 secs of 15% increased damage, then 48 secs later we get another 15% damage for 18 secs then another 45 secs we get 15% damage for 24 secs. then another 20-25 secs we get 15% damage for 18 secs. the uptime is ridiculously high for a 2pc. nerf incoming. not to mention ghouls without hero do about 6% of our damage, with the cd redution we're looking at 3 uses for a 6 min fight. i love the tier bonuses but i dont believe this will stay the same throughout TOS. nope, i dont believe it.

Lets look at how strong the set bonuses actually are.

The first Army of the Dead you get anyway so the 2 piece bonus is a 15% damage boost for 24 seconds. If we take a five minute fight that is 15% increased damage for 8% of the fight or about 1.2% total damage increase. Maybe more like 2% if you assume that extra damage is in the most useful part of the fight to have it, right at the start when you have all your cooldowns and probably heroism up.

The four piece bonus over the same length of time will give you, at best, two extra casts of Army of the Dead casts for about an extra 2.4% total damage increased. If you're going to boost the first one due to having all the cooldowns however you should probably dial this down a bit so lets call it another 2%. You will get some extra uptime on the death debuff and the damage from the ghouls. How much that is is hard to really tell. The death debuff is at best unpredictable. Lets be generous and say its worth another 1.5% total damage.

So probably you are looking at about a 2% damage increase from finishing the 2 piece bonus and maybe 3.5% damage increase for finishing the four piece bonus which is nice, you'll definitely want the set bonuses if that's how much you'll benefit but it certainly isn't going to make the class into some sort of powerhouse unless it is already very strong to begin with.


Doing some similar napkin math for frost you have the 2 piece bonus giving a 10% increase in Obliterate damage which is usually around 18% of the damage done so about a 1.8% damage increase. Looking at a random DK parse on Krosus (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=18) we see 110 Obliterate casts which would be 11 free Frost Strikes. His 23 Frost Strikes were 3.6% of his damage so 11 more would be 1.72% more damage. If it procs off the off hand too (which seems likely from the wording) you can double that to 3.44% and if the extra 10% proc can also proc we can add another 10% to that for 3.8% damage increase.


So just with some quick napkin math both of the set bonuses are pretty close in power:

Unholy: 2% and 3.5% for a total of 5.5% increased damage with the 4 piece.
Frost: 1.8% and 3.8% for a total of 5.6% increased damage with the 4 piece, pretty much identical.

Now of course these are both napkin math estimates. Maybe I'm missing something but it looks like the Unholy and Frost tier bonuses are both pretty good, both pretty much equal in power and both well worth getting but work out to somewhere in the 5-6% damage increase which seems just fine for a tier bonus.

P.S. Any idea why they took Apocalypse from granting 3 runes down to granting 2? From a PvE standpoint it seems like an almost inconsequential change. Is it to reduce burst in PvP slightly maybe?

[garonne]

Lets look at how strong the set bonuses actually are.

The first Army of the Dead you get anyway so the 2 piece bonus is a 15% damage boost for 24 seconds. If we take a five minute fight that is 15% increased damage for 8% of the fight or about 1.2% total damage increase. Maybe more like 2% if you assume that extra damage is in the most useful part of the fight to have it, right at the start when you have all your cooldowns and probably heroism up.

The four piece bonus over the same length of time will give you, at best, two extra casts of Army of the Dead casts for about an extra 2.4% total damage increased. If you're going to boost the first one due to having all the cooldowns however you should probably dial this down a bit so lets call it another 2%. You will get some extra uptime on the death debuff and the damage from the ghouls. How much that is is hard to really tell. The death debuff is at best unpredictable. Lets be generous and say its worth another 1.5% total damage.

So probably you are looking at about a 2% damage increase from finishing the 2 piece bonus and maybe 3.5% damage increase for finishing the four piece bonus which is nice, you'll definitely want the set bonuses if that's how much you'll benefit but it certainly isn't going to make the class into some sort of powerhouse unless it is already very strong to begin with.


Doing some similar napkin math for frost you have the 2 piece bonus giving a 10% increase in Obliterate damage which is usually around 18% of the damage done so about a 1.8% damage increase. Looking at a random DK parse on Krosus (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=18) we see 110 Obliterate casts which would be 11 free Frost Strikes. His 23 Frost Strikes were 3.6% of his damage so 11 more would be 1.72% more damage. If it procs off the off hand too (which seems likely from the wording) you can double that to 3.44% and if the extra 10% proc can also proc we can add another 10% to that for 3.8% damage increase.


So just with some quick napkin math both of the set bonuses are pretty close in power:

Unholy: 2% and 3.5% for a total of 5.5% increased damage with the 4 piece.
Frost: 1.8% and 3.8% for a total of 5.6% increased damage with the 4 piece, pretty much identical.

Now of course these are both napkin math estimates. Maybe I'm missing something but it looks like the Unholy and Frost tier bonuses are both pretty good, both pretty much equal in power and both well worth getting but work out to somewhere in the 5-6% damage increase which seems just fine for a tier bonus.

P.S. Any idea why they took Apocalypse from granting 3 runes down to granting 2? From a PvE standpoint it seems like an almost inconsequential change. Is it to reduce burst in PvP slightly maybe?

you didnt add the fact that army separate from the buff is doing 80 secs of damage. without hero they do about 4-6% damage each summon. with 2 summons that 8-12% damage.

[Deleted]

you didnt add the fact that army separate from the buff is doing 80 secs of damage. without hero they do about 4-6% damage each summon. with 2 summons that 8-12% damage.

No it isnt...

2nd cast would be much weaker. If there is a 2nd cast at all.

[garonne]

No it isnt...

2nd cast would be much weaker. If there is a 2nd cast at all.

im talking about army's damage, they do a sizable amount of damage even without hero. and with the cd you can fit 3 cast within 6 mins.

[Sulika]

you didnt add the fact that army separate from the buff is doing 80 secs of damage. without hero they do about 4-6% damage each summon. with 2 summons that 8-12% damage.

You're right, I didnt account for ghoul damage. Again picking a random fight (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=10) of exactly five minutes we see Army of the Dead being 6.5% of damage. That fight had 4 Apocalypse casts (since its a top 100 parse lets assume he summoned 6 ghouls each time).

So we have 8 * 35 seconds = 280 seconds of ghoul uptime from AotD (assuming it was precast and he didnt get full duration) and 4 * 6 * 15 = 360 seconds of ghoul uptime from Apocalypse.

So a total of 640 seconds of ghoul uptime = 6.5% of damage. For easy rounding we can say each 10 seconds of ghoul uptime adds 0.1% to total damage. Since a lot of that uptime is during heroism probably a number like 12 seconds of ghoul uptime later in the fight to add 0.1% is more reasonable. One extra Army of the Dead in the duration would be 2.7% extra damage, two would be 5.4% total damage (on top of the 5.5% I estimated earlier) which is quite a lot.

The final thing I didn't take account of is the rune cost. Spending 9 runes on Army of the Dead (I'm guessing it won't be precast since you would waste half the damage increase) would mean (on that parse) losing about 10% of his clawing shadow damage and presumably about 10% of the festering wounds damage too at a total cost of 3% damage lost.

So we end up with 5.5% increase from previous estimate plus 5.4% for ghouls minus 3% for the runes you lose out on for a total of about 7.9% increased damage.

At this point the big question is how quick you can recast AotD with the set bonus. If the timing of the fight works out such that you could cast it 3 times in that fight it would be pretty strong, if you can only get off one extra cast after the initial the value would drop quite substantially to more like 5%.

That would mean the you would probably see which was the stronger tier bonus vary based on fight length. If the fight is just the right length to squeeze in an extra army the Unholy would be stronger, if the fight was just the wrong length of time to do that then Frost would be stronger.

The two tier bonuses look (from my admittedly very error prone and very likely to have missed something perspective) to be reasonably close. Which ends up the stronger spec overall will probably come down to which is the stronger spec without the tier bonuses.

I'd be wary of anyone claiming one spec or the other will win out though. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers how certain everyone was that Unholy was going to be the stronger spec going into Nighthold (and the various "this is the death of frost" posts quite similar to those we see now) after the last round of class balances and even months later after some hotfix buffs its still lagging behind by an appreciable amount. It's fun to guess and speculate but nobody knows at this point.

P.S. Just for reference, based on running two sims one swapping out Dreadwyrm Crown for an equal ilvl Eventide Casque and thus keeping very much the same stats but losing the 4 piece bonus the current 4 piece bonus is worth about 3.8% increased damage to Unholy so the numbers above would put the set pretty much in line with the current set for power.

[Deleted]

Well frost was always stronger than assumed. The problem was the fixation on machinegun spec while breatj was already really strong.

I dont see that hidden potential for unholy. But i am sure unholy is stronger than it looks on warcraftlogs.

[Cerunnir]

You're right, I didnt account for ghoul damage. Again picking a random fight (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=10) of exactly five minutes we see Army of the Dead being 6.5% of damage. That fight had 4 Apocalypse casts (since its a top 100 parse lets assume he summoned 6 ghouls each time).

So we have 8 * 35 seconds = 280 seconds of ghoul uptime from AotD (assuming it was precast and he didnt get full duration) and 4 * 6 * 15 = 360 seconds of ghoul uptime from Apocalypse.

So a total of 640 seconds of ghoul uptime = 6.5% of damage. For easy rounding we can say each 10 seconds of ghoul uptime adds 0.1% to total damage. Since a lot of that uptime is during heroism probably a number like 12 seconds of ghoul uptime later in the fight to add 0.1% is more reasonable. One extra Army of the Dead in the duration would be 2.7% extra damage, two would be 5.4% total damage (on top of the 5.5% I estimated earlier) which is quite a lot.

The final thing I didn't take account of is the rune cost. Spending 9 runes on Army of the Dead (I'm guessing it won't be precast since you would waste half the damage increase) would mean (on that parse) losing about 10% of his clawing shadow damage and presumably about 10% of the festering wounds damage too at a total cost of 3% damage lost.

So we end up with 5.5% increase from previous estimate plus 5.4% for ghouls minus 3% for the runes you lose out on for a total of about 7.9% increased damage.

At this point the big question is how quick you can recast AotD with the set bonus. If the timing of the fight works out such that you could cast it 3 times in that fight it would be pretty strong, if you can only get off one extra cast after the initial the value would drop quite substantially to more like 5%.

That would mean the you would probably see which was the stronger tier bonus vary based on fight length. If the fight is just the right length to squeeze in an extra army the Unholy would be stronger, if the fight was just the wrong length of time to do that then Frost would be stronger.

The two tier bonuses look (from my admittedly very error prone and very likely to have missed something perspective) to be reasonably close. Which ends up the stronger spec overall will probably come down to which is the stronger spec without the tier bonuses.

I'd be wary of anyone claiming one spec or the other will win out though. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers how certain everyone was that Unholy was going to be the stronger spec going into Nighthold (and the various "this is the death of frost" posts quite similar to those we see now) after the last round of class balances and even months later after some hotfix buffs its still lagging behind by an appreciable amount. It's fun to guess and speculate but nobody knows at this point.

P.S. Just for reference, based on running two sims one swapping out Dreadwyrm Crown for an equal ilvl Eventide Casque and thus keeping very much the same stats but losing the 4 piece bonus the current 4 piece bonus is worth about 3.8% increased damage to Unholy so the numbers above would put the set pretty much in line with the current set for power.

The uptime on the 15% damage boost on a 5 minute fight would be 144 seconds, given 3 army casts and 4 apocalypse casts. (Army: 3x8 Ghouls x 3 seconds = 72 seconds, Apoc: 4x6 Ghouls x 3 Seconds = 72 Seconds) That is about 48% uptime on a 15% buff to all our damage. Thats a gigantic 2pc bonus. Even if we only get off 2 army casts, it would still be 40% uptime. This in addition to the damage output from more armies cast in its own right.

You really cant look at the UH DK set bonuses alone, since they are both dependant on the other to really shine.

So with the best case scenario, discountin the extra army damage which will do a few extra percent of damage. The two piece while playing off the benefit of the four piece will contribute 7,2% damage in a best case scenario and 6% in the worst case scenario.

When it comes to army damage in its own right. On last Krosus mythic kill combined army damage from Apoc and Army was near 8%, from 24 apoc ghouls and 8 army ghouls. That makes Apoc contribute about 1/3 of the damage, discounting the fact that its probably a tad more since its up during bloodlust. The total damage done from army is 20 million, with two more lets say it gets up to 30ish million. Thats a 10 million increase in damage. Given that I did about 260 million over the course of that fight, 10 million is about 3,8% of that damage.

VERY napkinmath, disregarding anything but the set bonuses in a void and not accounting for any potential talent swaps we will do or other buffs.. The Set bonuses is currently lingering around a 10+% buff alone. Ofcourse im not counting the loss of our current tier pieces, but our current set is probably one of the weaker set in tier 19, and the tier 20 is very very strong. Add the 5% buff ontop of this, in addition to other buffs to DC and getting an 11% Wound buff (Wounds were not part of the 6% aura before, but is now. So the 6% buff to wounds is new, and then an additional 5% buff ontop of it because they added it to the aura.).