Unholy PvE in 5.2

[Tojara]

Unholy frenzy giving us a 0.8 second GCD would be a really good QoL change.

I'd rather gargoyles CD be shorter than it's duration being longer.

I think a small strength scaling or something like ghoul requiring three stacks to become empowered would be a nice change.

[Rothulean1]

The only change is that it's affected by mastery, so it really depends how much mastery you've got.

28% outside a raid. Pretty low, in fact. Only 1942 rating.

[Deleted]

With these changes where does mastery currently stand? will it go over crit because we can dish out more deatcoils and the gargoyle will be boosted by it doesnt mastery increase the damage thus burst?

[Sinzaram]

Yeah for everyone yelling about Gary being awesome and scaling.

He totally isn't this build.

As i said above, hes totally still doing nature damage, combat log doesn't lie.

[Rothulean1]

Youre right, combat logs dont lie. It might be listed as nature damage, but its very clearly still getting mastery benefit. I dont know what youre doing differently, but mine is working just fine.

[Deleted]

Youre right, combat logs dont lie. It might be listed as nature damage, but its very clearly still getting mastery benefit. I dont know what youre doing differently, but mine is working just fine.

... damage looks good in that screenshot but wondering if there's anything else at play. The fact that it's listed as nature damage and not something shadow-related means I can't see how it'd scale with mastery at all at this point.

[Maxweii]

Youre right, combat logs dont lie. It might be listed as nature damage, but its very clearly still getting mastery benefit. I dont know what youre doing differently, but mine is working just fine.

It is working just as the tooltip says. It's prob just a bit of coding needed to do to switch over how a combat log read it. Although as I stated before, even with less STR, but greater mastery as Unholy (referencing video) the gargoyle did more dmg. Meaning the mastery affected it.

[Laroux]

For all we know it could be just that combat text hasn't been updated yet to reflect that it is doing shadow damage as well. Seems strange that they removed the runic power cost as well as updating its tool-tip for garg. but not updating that it should be doing "plague" damage and scaling with mastery.

Maybe they are still working out the numbers on how much it should scale.

In any case I gave up yesterday on the current PTR build since it's pretty lacking. I will definitely check back next beta build.

edit:

If you are testing it's damage simply do so by casting gargoyle without trinket procs or weapon enchant procs.

[Rothulean1]

For all we know it could be just that combat text hasn't been updated yet to reflect that it is doing shadow damage as well. Seems strange that they removed the runic power cost as well as updating its tool-tip for garg. but not updating that it should be doing "plague" damage and scaling with mastery.

Thats what I believe it is. They simply havent updated the tooltips yet. Hell, Icy Touch isnt even on Reaping yet.

[Raugnaut]

Frost DKs are already GCD locked, even without bloodlust, at T14H gear levels. 2H because it gears for haste and DW because masterfrost involves spamming a 1-rune attack. Actually, every melee spec in the game is GCD-locked right now outside of bloodlust except for unholy, ferals, and rogues, and Unholy will be GCD-locked next tier.

Unless they see changes, ferals and rogues (outside of possibly Combat with unglyphed Adrenaline Rush active or ferals with Berserk) will never be GCD-locked in this expansion. They have tons of free GCDs.

Thats mostly because, outside of berserk, all moves use at least 35 energy. In order to actually GCD lock outside of berserk, a feral/rogue will need well over 200% haste.

For DKs, theres really only 2 options to remedy the GCD locking problem. The first is to reduce the rune speed regen granted by haste, and increase the damage of all strikes to compensate. The second, quite simply, is to quit stacking haste upon reaching a level where you are GCD locked.

I do have a question- does the value of haste decrease at ALL once you start GCD locking yourself? If it doesn't, I would think that, for some strange reason or another, various simulations are calculating haste incorrectly. Whats the point in having more resources if you aren't using all of them? Unless having a rotation of nothing but Obliterates, and putting up diseases is a dps increase over potentially never using Frost Strike. (Or, unholy wise, nothing but SS, and next patch, Plague Strike.) That is what will eventually happen, assuming that you could GET that much haste.

Either way, it makes me wonder why potentially NEVER using a resource could result in more damage done then having ALL resources deal more damage (Crit) or some resources deal more damage (Mastery)

From my view, technically, all secondary stats should result in a 1% increase per 1% of the stat, barring anything else. 1% haste allows you to use 101 abilties when someone else only used 100, or a 1% damage increase. 1% crit means that out of 100 abilities, you did damage equal to 101 abilities. 1% mastery should generally increase your overall dps in some way or another by 1%. Hit is generally a dps increase in terms of not missing- without hit/expertise cap, 85 out of 100 abilities miss, with experitse/hit caps, 100 of 100 abilities hit. The way it seems to be with Frost/Unholy, Haste is a 3% dps gain, crit is a 1.5 dps gain, masterys a 1.2, and hit/expertise is more of a 5% dps gain, or something. (Random numbers are random)

[valliant13]

Huh? At the start of cata unholy was insane, then nerfed to mediocrity that stayed until 4.3 when gurth and other changes made it competitive, yet still dw frost was the better raiding spec.

I'm hoping you at least realize how god awful frost was before 4.1? Also unholy wasnt TERRIBLE for some of firelands. Just overall there was too much target swapping/burst damage needed therefor most dk's stayed frost. I was happy though when they made unholy viable again in 4.3. Now I'm just waiting for it in mop...I got tired of the RNG on top of RNG that was frost in cata and realized unholy was more fun because I controlled my dps not my procs.

[Vereesa]

I'm hoping you at least realize how god awful frost was before 4.1? Also unholy wasnt TERRIBLE for some of firelands. Just overall there was too much target swapping/burst damage needed therefor most dk's stayed frost. I was happy though when they made unholy viable again in 4.3. Now I'm just waiting for it in mop...I got tired of the RNG on top of RNG that was frost in cata and realized unholy was more fun because I controlled my dps not my procs.

By that logic Unholy's perfectly viable now, too. It's just that Gurthalak made Unholy competitive with Frost in 4.3.

Or maybe we should just stop using the term 'viable' altogether because it no longer holds any meaning considering every single spec in the game is now 'viable' for basically anything.

[Laroux]

Either way, it makes me wonder why potentially NEVER using a resource could result in more damage done then having ALL resources deal more damage (Crit) or some resources deal more damage (Mastery).

There are some who think stacking 15k haste will be the way to go, those people just read guides and never really test their theories in live environments.
They see haste weighs more so they stack that one stat only, and will through the all expac, not considering gcd locks.

Here is a simple test I did to check how mastery scales for unholy. I went to the dominion offensive area and hired a paladin for the 3k mastery buff and with just horn of winter buff I tested my disease damage, dnd and soul reaper.

+3k mastery increased my blood plague damage by just 2k per tick, it does absolutely nothing to frost fever since it's not unholy damage.
dnd from 3545 to 3896 per tick
soul reaper from 118,039 to 129,708

Now imagine the +3k mastery represented reforged stats out of crit and even haste just to get that kind of mastery in 5.1.

These numbers for +3k mastery are abysmal, a single crit on one tick of your diseases and you get a much bigger return on dps, since both diseases can crit.
Same goes for a single dnd crit. 4k to 8k (my rolling text rounds up).
I couldn't imagine going mass mastery in 5.2, rather finding a soft cap as soon as possible for haste then going mass crit will take you much farther on dps. I am sitting at 20% crit raid buffed and would be getting higher if it wasn't for that fact that my guild is falling apart at this moment and with me jumping ship by this weekend. So doing heroics is becoming an issue.

[fangless]

I do have a question- does the value of haste decrease at ALL once you start GCD locking yourself?

For DW, it starts to taper off at 8.5-9k or so, compared to Mastery (where they meet and become worth the same value). For 2h, it was around the same point where it started to drop off.

At these levels though, GCD issues still don't really occur unless you're getting external boosts in haste/RP (at least, from my experiences).

[wooootles]

Here is a simple test I did to check how mastery scales for unholy. I went to the dominion offensive area and hired a paladin for the 3k mastery buff and with just horn of winter buff I tested my disease damage, dnd and soul reaper.

+3k mastery increased my blood plague damage by just 2k per tick, it does absolutely nothing to frost fever since it's not unholy damage.
dnd from 3545 to 3896 per tick
soul reaper from 118,039 to 129,708

Now imagine the +3k mastery represented reforge stats out of crit and even haste just to get that kind of mastery in 5.1.

Won't Mastery also affect Scourge Strike (Shadow) and Death Coil, and soon Gargoyle too? That's a huge chunk of your overall damage.

But I don't know anything about Unholy since MoP.

[Laroux]

Won't Mastery also affect Scourge Strike (Shadow) and Death Coil, and soon Gargoyle too? That's a huge chunk of your overall damage.

But I don't know anything about Unholy since MoP.

For death coil the scaling is pretty mediocre as well; I am sure I checked but didn't write it down. Gargoyle is currently bugged in the PTR.

The shadow portion of ss is only 1/3 of the original strike I believe, its decent but I haven't checked the damage it gains from 3k mastery, it shouldn't be much, since again, the shadow portion strike is limited.

What I was getting at is you would need something like 5.3 mastery numbers for it become more meaningful; 6k-8k mastery? I don't see this happening in 5.2.

[Sinzaram]

Ok i did some more testing now my actual character is there on PTR and not a blue geared premade.

Gary damage definitely increases when you get more mastery.
I apologize to all I yelled at for not reading combat logs, turns out they do lie :P

I reforged about 3k more mastery and garys nukes went from 32k each to 35k with no trinket buffs. Obviously i gave up a crap ton of crit and haste for this, so likely a dps decrease, but he definitely goes up with more mastery.

[SavithDK]

I hope these changes dont make unholy better than frost. I like Frost so much better and wish to be able to play it for this whole xpac

[Sinzaram]

I hope these changes dont make unholy better than frost. I like Frost so much better and wish to be able to play it for this whole xpac

I don't think there's any fear of that happening.
At the moment damage between the specs is almost equal, unholy is just more annoying to play with de-syncing runes and all so no one plays it.

The short version of the changes is target swapping is easier and gargolye is an actual damaging cooldown now.
I don't think these will tip the scales to much tbh. It might not even matter considering how badly unholy scales with weapon damage.

[Nangz]

For death coil the scaling is pretty mediocre as well; I am sure I checked but didn't write it down. Gargoyle is currently bugged in the PTR.

The shadow portion of ss is only 1/3 of the original strike I believe, its decent but I haven't checked the damage it gains from 3k mastery, it shouldn't be much, since again, the shadow portion strike is limited.

What I was getting at is you would need something like 5.3 mastery numbers for it become more meaningful; 6k-8k mastery? I don't see this happening in 5.2.

With 5.2, unholy's stat priority will haste>=crit>mastery. Here is the source with the buildings of the profile discussed here.

http://173.164.183.244/phydeaux/wow/...2_results.html

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...17?page=15#298

Note that mastery also jumped as that poster mentioned by .2 from 1.3 to 1.5. Fairly decent increase to mastery's benefit.