Unholy Presence is viable.

[chronomasakari]

UP shouldn't even be a tool on most fights. Here's the thing.

UP won't amount to any significant loss in DPS. it's not a complete 15% dps loss because UP is obviously worth more than having no presence. But if you advocate switching between specs and being aware that UP is a functional tool, realize it's a tool with limited uses.

There is one fight that I would consider using UP in ICC, which is princes. For a few reasons. You sometimes have such little type to dps before some mechanic of the fight requires you to move, you'll get through more of your rotation by using UP than you would otherwise. The movement increase is also useful, but here's the biggest reason. Typically the movement speed increase in UP is more or less a wash as a benefit, because BP increases disease damage, so even during a movement phase BP benefits by giving you a damage increase to your disease which is still ticking. You can usually reapply diseases (or at least frost fever) while moving away so you can typically have a good amount of disease uptime. But a lot of the movement phases involves attacking a different boss, with your previous disease doing no damage to the boss that's not empowered.

BQL and putricide, specifically BQL is not a good boss to test your dps from week to week. Unless you get bitten first for both fights, you can't really use this as a gauge. Keep in mind the difference between UP and BP in a fight should be 5-10% increase to dps depending on a few factors such as movement and stuff, so not having to move that one extra time to avoid flames or for linking can almost make up for the difference between presences, this makes a fight with any real RNG in movement a poor fight to test this. At this point you should use your better judgement, but those two fights in particular have little movement so logically the choice still lies with BP.

Aside from Princes, i might use unholy in Gunship. It might do more dps, but no one cares if you do more dps in gunship, I usually spend my time while not on the enemy gunship falling off, or staying behind and trying to hijack a cannon.

And yes, if you outgear people or other people just suck, you can still top dps meters. Switching to unholy presence should only to amount to like a 5-7% dps loss. No it's not a huge difference nor will it be the end of the world, but it's just the proper way to play your class, and a no-brainer choice. Which is why people will adamantly insist that you play blood presence unless you know a specific fight benefits more from the GCD reduction and movement increase of Unholy.

[Apostolic]

UP might be good for some fights as explained in previous post. BP is your Bread and Butter. UP on high movement and target switching IE, Lich King might be viable.

Saying that UP is NEVER viable is retarded and you do not understand the mechanics of the class.

[Shiira]

If you're actually optimising your strategy to minimise movement at all then there is no reason to dps in unholy presence at the lich king, especially not in phase three.

Saying that unholy presence is never viable is wrong, but that's just because of what viable has come to mean in wotlk. The theory suggests that unholy presence shouldn't be better than blood for any of the bosses in icecrown and the logs support that.

If you have data that suggests that unholy may be better than blood in a certain situation then go ahead and post it, but if all you have is data showing that it's only a little worse then it isn't really news.

[Albert the fish]

since this thread is hopefully done now i suggest a new topic

do we really have to have the same discussion every week where people demand that their wacky style is viable and everyone else has to explain what the difference between viable and optimal are?

can't we just make a sticky? it'd consist of Kumduh in one short post "you can play however you want and however works for you personally. that doesn't make it optimal, just viable. please leave people alone unless you have proof that you've found a new optimal instead of just another viable."

[Shiira]

since this thread is hopefully done now i suggest a new topic

I have been considering writing a "how to be a contributing member of the mmochampion dk community" post for a while, but there isn't much point as most people won't bother reading it anyway. You can make as many stickies as you want but people just don't read them. Without some EJ style moderation it won't get better.

[Apostolic]

I have been considering writing a "how to be a contributing member of the mmochampion dk community" post for a while, but there isn't much point as most people won't bother reading it anyway. You can make as many stickies as you want but people just don't read them. Without some EJ style moderation it won't get better.

10 Stickies with ALL the information you need in them, and still you get posts such as "How does this trinket rate?" and "Do I tank with 2 tanking weapons?". They are posted like every 30 seconds.

Some people just do not research or even experiment in game. Its the dumb down of our instant gratification of our generation. Why do you think guilds fall apart on end of expansion bosses. They want the kill IMMEDIATELY rather then putting in the time. Or they as ask repetitive questions already answered in the previous sticky.

[Nangz]

10 Stickies with ALL the information you need in them, and still you get posts such as "How does this trinket rate?" and "Do I tank with 2 tanking weapons?". They are posted like every 30 seconds.

Some people just do not research or even experiment in game. Its the dumb down of our instant gratification of our generation. Why do you think guilds fall apart on end of expansion bosses. They want the kill IMMEDIATELY rather then putting in the time. Or they as ask repetitive questions already answered in the previous sticky.

It also comes down to simply being lazy.

Why comb through a long post just to find what the hit cap is? just make a new thread!!!! no problem there!!!

[Albert the fish]

i can expect and understand some of the questions.
for instance specific questions since we don't have a BiS list up(granted it's near impossible to make one, but people still wants) and some people suck at using sims.
but the whole, 'should i use tanking weapons to dw tank as frost?" and "can i dps in unholy pres" and "what glyphs should i take if im new to tanking?" are useless to the general population.

now if you show up and say "im testing this method of tanking glyph setups that i haven't heard about. these are my results, show me yours" i might be interested, if they actually put some effort into it as opposed to saying "well i glyphed ghoul as a frost tank and i tanked just fine therefore it's viable"

also someone asked a question a while ago if talents automatically updated your character pane, that's a good question. easy to answer on your own, but still the person is thinking instead of saying "i has frost spec, i should get spell hit capped cause i cast HB right?!"

[Shiira]

now if you show up and say "im testing this method of tanking glyph setups that i haven't heard about. these are my results, show me yours" i might be interested, if they actually put some effort into it as opposed to saying "well i glyphed ghoul as a frost tank and i tanked just fine therefore it's viable"

This is pretty much all I want. I don't mind helping people as long as they read the stickies, make an attempt to work stuff out on their own and then ask for help in an intelligent manner.

[Albert the fish]

This is pretty much all I want. I don't mind helping people as long as they read the stickies, make an attempt to work stuff out on their own and then ask for help in an intelligent manner.

same, but i know it's not going to happen

[Term]

It is, for frost dps.

(ain't trolling, just sharing the information)

Edit: Gonna share logs after the raid.

Edit 2: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...C3%A1yh%C3%A8m

Edit 3: Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-eg9i3iwcif28vdwj/

Edit 4: My point is that it is viable, and you can use it. It is especially effective if you have resto druids specced with Revitalization in your group.

2 handed frost is probably viable too, but it's not the best dps. Why not go with the best? You use epic gems (although you gem weird), you use expensive enchants, so why not use the best presence? You only did 12k dps on a 3:10 regular mode fight with a 15% buff. You could have gone to blood presence and maybe gotten a ranking...yeah your 12k didn't even get a ranking. Sounds to me like you just want to gloat about an O.K. parse.

The only time UP is good to utilize in ICC is when you have to move to an add that is extremely farther than your pestilence will reach, never while dps'ing. Even then you should be able to death coil along the way since you have so many druids with revitalize.

[Iosif]

Its up to 45% haste just like Enhancement and Furry.

I believe I stated in a later post that a 2.6 weapon in BiS Gear with UP would be at 1.23 or 52% haste

Also @ OP

Your thoughts on runes is entirely wrong...
It takes 10 sec for a run to refresh. If you used a ONLY single run abilities it would take 6 sec to use all runes. That leaves you with 4 sec of RP Dump before run number 1 is up again.

If you used them in pairs (i.e 3 OB) you would use 6 runes in 3 sec. That leave you 7 Sec of RP Dump.In Blood you would use 9 sec worth of Single runes and 1 Sec for RP Dump
4.5 Sec of rune pairs and 5.5 sec of RP Dump

thats why if you look at a rotation of:
IT, PS, OB, BS Pest = 5 Sec in UP, 7.5 in BP (5 next set in UP, 3.5 in BP) (5 FS - 2 FS)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OB, OB, OB = 3 sec in UP, 4.5 Sec in BP (7 sec till next set in UP, 5.5 in BP) (7 FS - 3 FS)
OB, OB, Pest, BS = 4 Sec in UP, 6 Sec in BP (6 Sec left in UP, 4 Sec left in BP) (6 FS - 2 FS)

There is no way you can use 18 Sec worth of FS and Rim procs. You don't have there resource to do it. You can most likely have the resource to do 7 abilities.

Thus you are not doing 50% more abilities, just doing abilities 33% faster with 33% more down time.

BP and UP will use the same amount of runes in a 5 min fight.

This is the reason why UP is good for PvP. The burst Damage. Save up RP and then do 6 Abilities and 4 RP Dumps in 10 Sec.

FYI % are not exact

This is correct... All the math i have seen on EJ and in Sim/RAWR that it is not possible to reliably generate enough RP to full up enough of the excess GDC to compensate for 15% dmg loss of Blood.Pres.

You do pick up some more swings but you hit for less and flat Dmg% modifiers are better overall. Raiding is about being able to put up consistent Dmg numbers, for a spec/rotation/play-style to be considered "viable" the damage has to be reliable, if it is based on ADDS/RNG or other class or the fluke use of CD's then its not really what is considered viable it gets thrown in to the "Situational" bracket.

There is an Icy Touch Spam Tank build for Heroic LK for picking up snap threat on the Spirits - this is a "situational" build/play style for a particular fight and has been prove to be sub-par to more traditnal builds on most other fights.

The examples of Unholy.Pres. is reliant on to many uncontrollable factors for many to accept it as a "viable" play style. Maybe in Cata when blizzard makes RP more meaningful Unholy.Pres. will be more "viable".