Question about Multistrike Vs Mastery as Unholy in PVE. Pls help.

[Maxweii]

Probably gonna go mastery for xul progress tonight. No idea if ill be bos or np yet.

In fact better watch fatboss video now...

Good tip for Xhul is that you can AMS during the cast of Fel Surge, make sure you're the closest to him, and not only will you not get Fel Surge it will consume one of the five Fel surges he would have put out so you'll only get 4. It's a ton less healing to do especially in last phase

[friedmudkipz]

Probably gonna go mastery for xul progress tonight. No idea if ill be bos or np yet.

In fact better watch fatboss video now...

NP is fantastic on xhul, swapping all of your gems and enchants to mastery for one fight is not.

[Deleted]

NP is fantastic on xhul, swapping all of your gems and enchants to mastery for one fight is not.

TBH it was first go at xul and i didn't bother swapping to mastery. At least for us progressing, NP seems massively better than BoS. Spent most of the pulls messing with trinkets UeH and (i can't believe this) class trinket seemed best combo. Loom trinket seemed a bit crap tbh.

[Maxweii]

NP is fantastic on xhul, swapping all of your gems and enchants to mastery for one fight is not.

Likely mastery would do him better on Manno and Archy as well, but that depends on his raid

[Deleted]

Obviously not got to mango yet and may still swap to mastery on xul. Thing is I prefer bos so will probably go bos for mango at least initially.

Phone auto correct usually socks but in this case I will start referring to manoroth as mango. Just like Jub jub

Autocorrect does indeed sock.

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Good tip for Xhul is that you can AMS during the cast of Fel Surge, make sure you're the closest to him, and not only will you not get Fel Surge it will consume one of the five Fel surges he would have put out so you'll only get 4. It's a ton less healing to do especially in last phase

Meant to say earlier Ty for this its v handy indeed. AMS is up for each cast as long as it doesn't take too much damage. Hmm I wonder if I can make a ams cancel macro?

[Maxweii]

Obviously not got to mango yet and may still swap to mastery on xul. Thing is I prefer bos so will probably go bos for mango at least initially.

Phone auto correct usually socks but in this case I will start referring to manoroth as mango. Just like Jub jub

Autocorrect does indeed sock.

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Meant to say earlier Ty for this its v handy indeed. AMS is up for each cast as long as it doesn't take too much damage. Hmm I wonder if I can make a ams cancel macro?

Autocorrect crit you there for sure

It should be up every time with the regen Magic glyph as long as you don't have an explosion go off too close to you. As there is low aoe damage on this fight, except at the end where you might have to not be able to AMS one cast. Also I believe a cancel aura macro will not trigger regen Magic but I haven't checked in a while

[Deleted]

Autocorrect crit you there for sure

It should be up every time with the regen Magic glyph as long as you don't have an explosion go off too close to you. As there is low aoe damage on this fight, except at the end where you might have to not be able to AMS one cast. Also I believe a cancel aura macro will not trigger regen Magic but I haven't checked in a while

Yeah i think the damage i take is from explosions while we practice. Its just a bit annoying to not be able to ams the cast when its my turn to grip. We'll get better fast enough.

[Maxweii]

Yeah i think the damage i take is from explosions while we practice. Its just a bit annoying to not be able to ams the cast when its my turn to grip. We'll get better fast enough.

Yeah give it a bit, it will all fall into place where you can EASILY AMS all of em. So much less movement it's really my favorite part of being a DK there

[friedmudkipz]

TBH it was first go at xul and i didn't bother swapping to mastery. At least for us progressing, NP seems massively better than BoS. Spent most of the pulls messing with trinkets UeH and (i can't believe this) class trinket seemed best combo. Loom trinket seemed a bit crap tbh.

Xhul isn't a demon, so heirloom trink isn't going to do you much good most likely. Also, as much as mmo-champ likes to shit on class trinket, it is pretty good while progressing on certain fights (like xhul). I'd only really swap it out for a DC.

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Likely mastery would do him better on Manno and Archy as well, but that depends on his raid

Considering manno and archi have less dependence on NP damage than xhul, I'd say multi would be superior on both in the vast majority of scenarios. Mastery would be roughly equal to multi at best, and would only decrease in value as stuff dies faster.

[Maxweii]

Xhul isn't a demon, so heirloom trink isn't going to do you much good most likely. Also, as much as mmo-champ likes to shit on class trinket, it is pretty good while progressing on certain fights (like xhul). I'd only really swap it out for a DC.

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Considering manno and archi have less dependence on NP damage than xhul, I'd say multi would be superior on both in the vast majority of scenarios. Mastery would be roughly equal to multi at best, and would only decrease in value as stuff dies faster.

The imps on Xhul however are demons.
During progression if he's out on doing a lot of imp or dog damage NP would clearly be better. As I've said a few times now, it depends on his raid group.

[Deleted]

Xul is progress for us - so i'd gem spirit if it helped us progress

[LenytheMage]

The imps on Xhul however are demons.
During progression if he's out on doing a lot of imp or dog damage NP would clearly be better. As I've said a few times now, it depends on his raid group.

If he is doing a large amount of damage to the imps or dogs during the fight, a lot of his damage would also be from blood boil, making multi quite strong. Usually if your Blood Boiling quite a bit multi will be matching or beating mastery in damage. Re-gemming/enchanting to mastery for no gain or benefit seems wasteful to me.

As for the heirloom trinket, I've tried it out and if you get really really lucky it can beat out others, but I think DC or the Class trinket would be your best bet. Leaning a bit towards DC, because if the imps are staying up long enough for the class trinket to really get going, the are alive for too long anyway.

[Maxweii]

If he is doing a large amount of damage to the imps or dogs during the fight, a lot of his damage would also be from blood boil, making multi quite strong. Usually if your Blood Boiling quite a bit multi will be matching or beating mastery in damage. Re-gemming/enchanting to mastery for no gain or benefit seems wasteful to me.

As for the heirloom trinket, I've tried it out and if you get really really lucky it can beat out others, but I think DC or the Class trinket would be your best bet. Leaning a bit towards DC, because if the imps are staying up long enough for the class trinket to really get going, the are alive for too long anyway.

Yeah how much he blood boils depends... On his raid group. They could do a strat where people focus them down super fast, which would make it not worth it. Or they could make it as to where hey don't focus them down as fast and use casual cleave to kill them, which switching would be worth for. Don't get why you're so dead set on Mastery losing to MS. A general rule of thumb is MS is single target and Mastery for aoe. If you want to nit pick there's dozens of nuances that get factored in, but likely since its progression the aoe would matter more.

On the trinket thing, we killed Xhul before the heirlooms were out but I use Class trinket for it. Comes down to if you can get ~11%+ damage from it then it's worth it, if not switch to the cleave trunk.

[LenytheMage]

Yeah how much he blood boils depends... On his raid group. They could do a strat where people focus them down super fast, which would make it not worth it. Or they could make it as to where hey don't focus them down as fast and use casual cleave to kill them, which switching would be worth for. Don't get why you're so dead set on Mastery losing to MS. A general rule of thumb is MS is single target and Mastery for aoe. If you want to nit pick there's dozens of nuances that get factored in, but likely since its progression the aoe would matter more.

Using a general rule, as you said is a flawed idea, but considering this thread is mostly about Xhul we can work around the general rule and apply it to how the fight works.

If the imps are staying up for a long time, your likely already not going to do that well on the fight because of them getting casts off. If they are staying up for a shortish amount of time, multi would easily beat out mastery as you wouldn't get very many if any ticks from NP. BB spam and necrosis damage would be your main AoE contribution to the imp making multi much better.

If the adds are getting interrupted and staying up for a while, most of your damage are going to be from three things, BB, Necrosis and NP. In this case, I would see Master and Multi being very close in value as the longer the imps stay up the more BB/Necrosis hits you get making it a larger part of your damage than it previously would be.

Obviously the imps are not the only adds on the fight, we are also getting the two larger adds, Vanguard Akkelion and Omnus, and the the unstable void fiends. For Vanguard/Omnus most of your damage will be from NP giving mastery a edge. However, as you will likely be focusing them down first to get the bonus cleave damage on Xhul they don't last too far into the fight and you will be dumping a large amount of damage onto them from other sources. Still, a decent amount of damage to Vanguard/Omnus will be the incidental cleave from BBing the Imps, making multi strike not 100% useless, but definitely weaker.

One other factor to take in for Vanguard/Omnus that they leave the fight rather quickly, on my guilds first kill Omnus left at 2:40, with Vanguard a bit before that, on a 5:24 fight leaving them gone for about half the fight. From looking through other first time kills (including yours) this seems to be about average with first kills as recent as yesterday. (Obviously with shorter kill times in part from the item upgrades)

The final adds being the void fiends, largely a ranged job but it's quite easy to BB them and spread your NP around so shouldn't be discounted. This is where mastery will destroy multistrike except in the most special of situations. Your BB will only likely hit them a few times mostly just to get dots onto them, and the rest will be done by NP. The longer these stay up the more damage your mastery will do to them, so if these are staying up for a quite a long time in your group just maybe could I see switching to mastery. But largely going near them is risky, as it is quite easy to kite them accidentally into melee and wipe the group that way.

The one final thing to look at is the sub 20% burn phase. While your damage during this phase will hardly be the majority it's not insignificant and during progression and on first kills it's not uncommon to start losing people sub 20% rather quickly making any damage valuable. Obviously being ST Multi wins with ease on this potion of the fight.

Overall, how I see it is unless your group is leaving adds up long past what is reasonable, or void fiends are running rampant, mastery will never be a better choice for Xhul. And if they are staying up for so long, it is likely that you would do better to be multi, to make sure they get burst down quickly. As for why I'm so dead set on multistrike beating mastery, it's because I think it's bad advice, so I gave my two cents.



As for DC, I was seeing a large % of damage from it (7-8% on some pulls) and felt that it beat out a 9-11% class trinket with the strength being added to everything else. Both trinkets obviously gain quite a bit from adds being up, with the fel cleave being more effective on the imps and the class being more effective on the voidfiends. I also felt the class trinket dropped in value heavily once Vanguard/Omnus died, leaving you with a near dead trinket for half the fight.

[Maxweii]

I think I'll just sim it later instead of nit pick at it with you. Mastery is still our stronger AoE stat, as Necrosis isn't so overbearing on our dps that it makes it lose value.

Especially considering you use NP and PL on Xhul you're relying on NO damage more then usual as is.

[LenytheMage]

I think I'll just sim it later instead of nit pick at it with you. Mastery is still our stronger AoE stat, as Necrosis isn't so overbearing on our dps that it makes it lose value.

Especially considering you use NP and PL on Xhul you're relying on NO damage more then usual as is.

Guessing you mean NP instead of NO?

Also, I don't have a single kill with PL except as blood (with BoS) so don't know what your getting at.

[Maxweii]

Guessing you mean NP instead of NO?

Also, I don't have a single kill with PL except as blood (with BoS) so don't know what your getting at.

There's no reason to use UB on a fight you never let your dots fall off the boss, so you use PL to get extra BB's/FS's from the adds dots. Unless you use Breath it should be NP/PL

[lilgayatlas]

There's no reason to use UB on a fight you never let your dots fall off the boss, so you use PL to get extra BB's/FS's from the adds dots. Unless you use Breath it should be NP/PL

You get more damage using UB.

You waste more runes on FS using PL w/ NP.

[Maxweii]

You get more damage using UB.

You waste more runes on FS using PL w/ NP.

Again, considering you never want the dot to drop off if you use NP on Xhul, no you're gaining damage not losing it.
But then again ya MMO-C so every random poster has to be an infallible source. I'll stick with more reliable sources of information then yours, thank you.

[Deleted]

I only had played my DK as DPS for a couple of weeks before we started xhul progress, and looking back at the video of it it's almost embarrassing. Letting NP fall off right before imps spawn and then spam dry blood boil on them T^T. I loved the fight as a DK though, so GL on progress.