Unholy spec dps

[Stykon 0]

Hello everyone,

I'm an unholy DK with an ilvl consisting of 845 with no legendaries. I've been trying out different talent specs and tried to get the best dps out. As of now i'm running following talents: 

Bursting sores, Pestilent Pustules, Castigator, Sludge Belcher, Lingering Apparition, Shadow Infusion and Soul Reaper. 

Rotation:

Army(Few secs before fight), Dark transformation(Few secs before fight), Summon Gargoyle, Outbreak, Festering stacks till 7-8 stacks, Soul reaper, Apocalypse, Festering Strike, Scourge Strike after atleast 3 stacks. Use runic power on Death Coil. Repeat. 

Stats: 

22884 Strength

21.03% (6803) Haste

27.93% (8025) Critical Strike

37.14% (2977) Mastery

I can maintain 200-220k dps on single target and do about 300-400k+ burst depending on if Bloodlust is popped. Is that good? Is that bad? Can I do better? If so how?

My character's name is: Blöod-Silvermoon
Here is the armory page: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/silvermoon/Blöod/simple (Not updated)

 

Another question I also have is: Is Epidemic a better talent choice for AoE damage? If so how does the rotation change? Is it the same as above, but where epidemic is to be popped after first round of burst and be maintained below 2 stacks? 

Thank you so much. Dearly,

Blöod.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Stykon

[demonardvark 556]

in general you appear to be doing fine, however, in this case of "fix my dps" posts, without proper logs we can't really help you much. even then without raids being out, there is question about fight duration that leads to desired talents.

i.e. if you are higher geared and doing heroic bosses, you'd want to focus on burn so you'd prioritize dark arbiter vs doing mythic and a longer boss you'd want soul reaper. so depending on boss duration you might be able to do better deeps with certain builds vs others. 

with epidemic usage, you want to have tightly stacked adds all with virulent plague on them, then i'd burn all 3 charges. in the off chance they survive, then just use on cooldown. for the eventuality of extended aoe boss fights it would behoove you to hold charges for a possible trinket proc, otherwise just burn em

[Valks 2,373]

If you're unsure of how to record logs, here is a guide by Zagam. It's slightly old, but the information is still solid.

[Stykon 0]

Hello demonardvak,

The thing with dark arbiter is this: 

You have to contantly use your runic power to empower the valkyr. However, when bloodlust is popped at start and you're focusing on popping festering wounds, it can lower your burst by quite a bit. Soul Reaper on the other hand gives you even more haste on top of the Bloodlust allowing you to almost instant-cast all spells. It really improved my dps by a mile. I cannot say for sure though, since I've not been practicing with each build for months :/. Another thing that makes Soul Reaper really strong is that you receive 'Summon Gargoyle', which also adds to your dps on top of Soul Reaper. The only concern I've with Soul Reaper is that it sometimes goes un-used, since I run out of runes quicker than I can use them. 

As for the logs: Am I able to provide logs for a dungeon run? If not it has to be on raids then i suppose. 

Blöod

[Valks 2,373]

With proper RP management, your Val'kyr should be doing some pretty massive damage. We can take a look at your use of it if show us a log.

As for your log question, yes you can record a dungeon run. You can even record hitting a training dummy.

[demonardvark 556]

Dungeon logs are fine :)

Dark Arbiter is beat stick. Also, depending on how you are upgrading your artifact, you eventually get increased runic power meaning you can dump more rp into her. Plus the legendary   Tak'theritrix's Shoulderpads makes her damage all the more impressive. However, again , this comes down to boss length. She is the burst talent, that will be used for fast progression and farming. So, say you have a mythic dungeon group running daily heroic just for the prize. The group will focus on burst talents because the boss will melt. However, for the mythic dungeons soul reaper will be infintely better because its a sustained fight. So, at launch, Soul reaper will be far preferred talent in emerald dream because of the fight length, as people begin to outgear it, the boss lengths will get under a minute and burst will be better :)

also you can pre pull some runic power, they nerfed it to only 20, but it helps quite a bit, there is a very different rotation when using dark arbiter but teh short of it, is you can get her completely juiced up in a lust window :)

[Drtain 74]

As a unholy dk who has atleast imo been very good at dk i've been doing about 250-270k dps in heroic dungeons at 843 ilvl, doing like in 220 in mythic dungeons, (this is without lust, but with army.) So i would say you're not to far behind though it sounds like there might be some slight flaws without proper logs, or proper fight lengths there realyl isn't a way for us to tell how good or bad we are currently doing.

[Stykon 0]

Thank you for the answers everyone !
 

Here is a combat log from Halls of Valor on normal difficulty (from 3rd boss and onwards). I'll be doing more dungeons meaning I'll edit this reply and add more logs :D.

 

About Dark Arbiter:

Hmm, I always thought that this did equivalent damage as my pet in Dark Transformation. However, this is also the case since I do not own any legendaries that would up the damage on the valkyrie and I follow the Icy-Veins artifact power guide religiously. So far I'm level 18 and working on 'Plaguebearer'. So maybe the valkyrie's damage will increase significantly as I work on my weapon and get some legendaries that synergize well with it :).

 

Logs: 

1) Halls of Valor normal - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/aACxBj7VHF9fPDTr/

2) Eye of Azshara normal - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/912TDV8MpYwCNaPb/

Those are it for now :).

Edited September 12, 2016 by Stykon

[Valks 2,373]

Thanks for posting those! I'm sure demon can take a look at those as soon as the US hours catch up. I won't bother giving any log advice, since he can do what I can and much more.

[Stykon 0]

Alright :) thanks for the heads up Blainie :)

 

[Stykon 0]

Here is another log of a dummy that would be more precise. However, i hit three targets at once with the plague and when i popped the festering wounds. The damage is therefore:

55.38 mil on the raider dummy 

16.69 mil on dungeoneer dummy.

Thus, it is a little misleading, but I've just gotten two +200 haste enchants on my ring and a new legendary cloak. That is why I felt the urge to upload a new log. Thanks in advance.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/nmhkKPgyxAdGD8FV/

 

Blöod.

[demonardvark 556]

13 hours ago, Stykon said:

Here is another log of a dummy that would be more precise. However, i hit three targets at once with the plague and when i popped the festering wounds. The damage is therefore:

55.38 mil on the raider dummy 

16.69 mil on dungeoneer dummy.

Thus, it is a little misleading, but I've just gotten two +200 haste enchants on my ring and a new legendary cloak. That is why I felt the urge to upload a new log. Thanks in advance.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/nmhkKPgyxAdGD8FV/

 

Blöod.

I mean, its hard to say a lot here because there isn't much you are doing wrong, everything appears to be quite by the book. There are only two areas were I can say anything at all and one frankly is more of a question then anything. Even then I hesitate to comment without first making something very clear.

Your rotation is basically perfect for when the raids launch, as is your talent build. For the dungeons specifically we can get you more DPS, however, its only because of the kill time. Your group is killing bosses in under one minute. That means the burst build is far superior for you. However, don't get too attached to it because come emerald nightmare it won't be the best one for awhile.

That being said, your kill times are very fast so you aren't getting much use out of soul reaper. For those quick kills you'd want to switch to Dark Arbiter. In addition, you'd also like to switch from Castigator to Blighted Rune weapon. These two talents will push you into Huge Burst Damage, which will increase the overall damage you are seeing. However, again, I note, that for raids you are doing more than good. You want more dps, we can get it for you in dungeons, but using this build in raid at launch is probably a nono.

The one thing I cannot see so i must ask, is, do you have scourge of the world golden talent? I'm not sure if this buff shows up on logs or not because its technically a debuff on the boss. The short of it is making sure to have that debuff up before scourge striking can lead to huge dps gains. The basic way i'm rolling now is festering strike to 6-8 wounds, death coil until scourge proc, then scourge strike like a madman until debuff ends. It yields much higher dps than well ignoring the proc XD

[Valks 2,373]

And here he is to provide all that beautiful DK knowledge! Like I said, much more than I could ever give :p

[Stykon 0]

Thanks for the long and insightful comment :)! 

Yes I do have that golden talent and what's weird is: I don't see that debuff aswell when and if it procs haha. It was the first talent I got, so yeah :o

[demonardvark 556]

1 hour ago, Stykon said:

Thanks for the long and insightful comment :)! 

Yes I do have that golden talent and what's weird is: I don't see that debuff aswell when and if it procs haha. It was the first talent I got, so yeah :o

Great

Im actually writing up a guide later tonight to help people. Tegu has confirmed my suspicious are correct which very quickly gives the guide credibility. Scourge fishing however is another RNG thing for unholy DK's so I guess after outlaw we are the gambling spec. I'm not going to say its mandatory however, it will separate normal DK's from Leet ones. 

And yeah it's hard to notice and its a short window debuff. Even then it is rng based so you don't always get it. So, there's going to be fishing windows where you are trying to get it to proc but after that you say F it and move on with rotation. So, later tonight ( within next 12 hours). I hope to have the guide up and I think it may be able to eek you out some good numbers by using it. Plus you will be a good guinea pig to confirm further that it increases dps when used properly XD

 

[demonardvark 556]

2 hours ago, Blainie said:

And here he is to provide all that beautiful DK knowledge! Like I said, much more than I could ever give :p

I'm a simple man, all I know is Dk theorycrafting and how to make dank memes.

[Stykon 0]

Alright perfect :)! I will happily read it. 

Thanks for everything demonardvark and the others who helped out! 

[Valks 2,373]

On 9/16/2016 at 6:36 PM, demonardvark said:

I'm a simple man, all I know is Dk theorycrafting and how to make dank memes.

My memes are the dankest and you know it

[demonardvark 556]

4 hours ago, Blainie said:

My memes are the dankest and you know it

[Valks 2,373]

[demonardvark 556]

8 hours ago, Blainie said:

Well I'm going to have nightmares forever. Looks like an old runescape design mixed with a big bag of WTF

[Valks 2,373]

On 9/22/2016 at 0:12 PM, demonardvark said:

Well I'm going to have nightmares forever. Looks like an old runescape design mixed with a big bag of WTF

memesboys