Unholy Death Coil better than Gargyole CD

[Aquais]

Death knight folks - today on the Daily Preach - there was a very interesting comment that was made. He made the comment regarding how it might be better to use more death coils than it would be to spend that runic power on bringing out gargyole. I noticed that Elitest Jerks has this comment in their guide "There is currently no mechanic from which he scales with mastery so as our own mastery increases, the value of casting him vs. Death Coiling begins to decrease." At what point of mastery should we stop using this little guy? Or is he just a lost cause in general?

[Deleted]

I used death coil today on a slime. It made a silly face.



Admittedly, I don't know too much about unholy. I played it a long time ago, but I was under the impression that the gargoyle was one of the class' "signature moves", in which case I really don't think it ought to be underpowered enough that it doesn't get used.

[Shiira]

Gargoyle is always going to be better at turning runic power into damage than death coil.

[Vereesa]

Technically, with enough mastery, Death Coil would eventually (read: never) do more damage on a per runic power basis, but those kind of numbers aren't possible in practice.

This isn't to say, however, that you should always prioritise Gargoyle over Death Coil as I'm sure there plenty of real-life situations where getting that Death Coil in (for SI stacks for example) is paramount.

[Sinzaram]

Thing is there's more from death coil damage, Timmy Transformation uptime is obviously most important even over Garg.

[SSHA778]

At what point of mastery should we stop using this little guy? Or is he just a lost cause in general?

It is currently still a gain to cast him, but it does decrease as you gear up.

For the reasons why that is the case,

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...6985?page=4#63
and the post right below it (#64).

It will likely still technically be "worth it" (damage per RP) for all of the expansion, but barely by the end.

[Pieterman]

Wait with summoning your gargoyle untill after DT. No dps loss this way, and the 20% haste from unholy frenzy will benefit your transformed pet aswell. Unless your itemisation is completely messed up (mastery with spirit gear) there won't be a point where gargoyles will be a DPS loss

[obscurede]

Well, when you use the gargoyle alone, gargy does, well shitty nature dmg. But since Unholy frenzy and Gargy shares the same amount of cd (3min), its optimal to use them at the same time. So technically speaking, the dmg output from the increase in haste can be accounted for the so called "loss" in the dps.

[Deleted]

It depends on how much mastery will be valued on next tiers, at the moment Gary>DC.

[Shiira]

It depends on how much mastery will be valued on next tiers

No, it doesn't.

With any amount of mastery that you're ever realistically going to have at any gear level you're going to want to be using gargoyle.

There may be situations where you will want to prioritise death coil for shadow infusion stacks, but you will never stop using gargoyle.

[Deleted]

With any amount of mastery that you're ever realistically going to have at any gear level you're going to want to be using gargoyle.

There may be situations where you will want to prioritise death coil for shadow infusion stacks, but you will never stop using gargoyle.

We can't predict anything so you can't be 100% sure. On the other side I'm 100% sure it will depend on how much mastery we'll get and how Gary will scale with better gear.

[Vereesa]

We can't predict anything so you can't be 100% sure. On the other side I'm 100% sure it will depend on how much mastery we'll get and how Gary will scale with better gear.

Then again we can't realistically predict they won't release a new expansion tomorrow that'll add 70 new classes and wholly revamp the existing ones, can we?

On topic: Chances are such mastery levels won't ever be reachable at level 90 and Gargoyle will still remain better on a per-RP basis.

[Shiira]

In bis gear one gargoyle summon is worth around 600k damage.

On the other hand, one death coil is worth around 60k damage.

I'm fairly confident that gargoyle is going to continue to be worth using.

[Schizoide]

Those numbers are accurate, but DC also scales with mastery, procs your L75 talent, stacks shadow infusion, and doesn't have AI issues. So it's not immediately obvious.

In T14H gear simcraft predicts a 4.2% total performance loss skipping the gargoyle entirely. This does assume that its AI works, though.

To look at scaling, I added mastery to the T14H profile. At +2000 mastery, skipping gargoyle was a 4.1% performance loss. Even at +4000 mastery, it's still a 3.9% loss. We won't get more than 4000 mastery over T14H gear in this expansion, particularly since unholy doesn't reforge to it.

[SSHA778]

Wait with summoning your gargoyle untill after DT. No dps loss this way, and the 20% haste from unholy frenzy will benefit your transformed pet aswell. Unless your itemisation is completely messed up (mastery with spirit gear) there won't be a point where gargoyles will be a DPS loss

The gargoyle isn't a DPS loss regardless of when you cast it.

It's just a smaller and smaller DPS gain as you level up. There is a cost to burning 60 RP because T75 and SI exist, and this rises as you gear up.

[Deleted]

everyone here is replying as if mastery is the only stat that is going to increase witht here gear, garg scales iwth str and haste doesn't it? so surely the increase in his stats are going to be linear with DC

[Schizoide]

It doesn't scale at the same rate, no.

I only looked at mastery because the gargoyle doesn't scale with mastery, and if any disparity existed to be found, that's where it would come up.

[Deleted]

Then again we can't realistically predict they won't release a new expansion tomorrow that'll add 70 new classes and wholly revamp the existing ones, can we?

That was not what I meant. I was talking about the fact that we can't really predict how much mastery we will get with +535 gear nor how Gary will scale with it compared to DC. So, in my opinion, it will depend on those factors.

Those numbers are accurate, but DC also scales with mastery, procs your L75 talent, stacks shadow infusion, and doesn't have AI issues. So it's not immediately obvious.

In T14H gear simcraft predicts a 4.2% total performance loss skipping the gargoyle entirely. This does assume that its AI works, though.

To look at scaling, I added mastery to the T14H profile. At +2000 mastery, skipping gargoyle was a 4.1% performance loss. Even at +4000 mastery, it's still a 3.9% loss. We won't get more than 4000 mastery over T14H gear in this expansion, particularly since unholy doesn't reforge to it.

What about PvP?

[Schizoide]

That was not what I meant. I was talking about the fact that we can't really predict how much mastery we will get with +535 gear nor how Gary will scale with it compared to DC. So, in my opinion, it will depend on those factors.

Sure we can. Each tier of gear (13 ilvls) is 10% stat inflation. Obviously stat distribution varies, but you can certainly approximate how much mastery we'll have in future tiers.

Does unholy reforge to mastery in PvP? I didn't know that. Anyway, you won't get more than 4000 mastery rating over current conquest gear in the MoP expansion. 4000 is a ton of rating.

[SSHA778]

Unless they fixed the chain-casting issue with the Gargoyle, the Gargoyle scales with strength and crit.

You scale with haste, mastery, crit, strength, and weapon damage. All of those make the gargoyle a weaker cooldown--not just mastery.