Unholy DK - When would Clawing shadows be better?

[kbone1234 0]

Basically question is in the title. I have been getting kind of unlucky with getting haste/crit gear and have been getting A LOT of mastery gear. I am just curious when you guys would think it would be acceptable to swithc to Clawing Shadows.. if acceptable at all. Also, would it be better to switch some talents around then? Would Dark Arbiter be a better choice for dps with this mastery? Thanks

EDIT: Also my stats are 52% mastery, 20% crit, 17% haste

Edited September 9, 2016 by kbone1234

[demonardvark 556]

The short of it is clawing shadows cannot compete right now with castigator under any circumstances. Clawing shadows place in the game right now is for pvp. The problem is castigator has too much synergy with other talents and legendary items while clawing shadows does not. The other reason (im really trying not to sound like an ass with this one) is just math, it would take obscene levels of mastery to overcome castigator and at that point just from rng you would probably have enough crit where it still couldn't match. 

As far as big talent switches they wouldn't be related to mastery builds per say. Talent builds now are more based around long term consistant damage vs huge burst. So Dark arbiter is better for huge burst while soul reaper would be better for sustained. Again though we run into synergies. Soul reaper would give you more clawing shadows, however it has insane synergy with castigator and pestulant pustules. 

So, don't think just because you don't have 9000% crit that you need to change your build. Guides are aimed at highest lvls of play and some gear lvls are just stingy with a stat. So, there is not necessarily a need (at least with dks) to do huge turn arounds based upon stats. Gem and enchant for crit, and just roll that way :). again clawing shadows just doesn't have any real pve implications at all. However, for bgs it is god :)

edit: also there is the factor of diminishing returns, basically at a certain point your return on investement for a stat is too low to be worth it. dks suffer from this badly, a lot of our stuff scales poorly. Mastery is in this camp. Now, crit will eventually have a point where you don't need more, however, it has a much greater return on investment and a longer one than mastery (as of right now)

[kbone1234 0]

Just now, demonardvark said:

The short of it is clawing shadows cannot compete right now with castigator under any circumstances. Clawing shadows place in the game right now is for pvp. The problem is castigator has too much synergy with other talents and legendary items while clawing shadows does not. The other reason (im really trying not to sound like an ass with this one) is just math, it would take obscene levels of mastery to overcome castigator and at that point just from rng you would probably have enough crit where it still couldn't match. 

As far as big talent switches they wouldn't be related to mastery builds per say. Talent builds now are more based around long term consistant damage vs huge burst. So Dark arbiter is better for huge burst while soul reaper would be better for sustained. Again though we run into synergies. Soul reaper would give you more clawing shadows, however it has insane synergy with castigator and pestulant pustules. 

So, don't think just because you don't have 9000% crit that you need to change your build. Guides are aimed at highest lvls of play and some gear lvls are just stingy with a stat. So, there is not necessarily a need (at least with dks) to do huge turn arounds based upon stats. Gem and enchant for crit, and just roll that way :). again clawing shadows just doesn't have any real pve implications at all. However, for bgs it is god :)

 

That makes sense. Thanks a lot for the explanation instead of just telling me its good or shit. lol

[demonardvark 556]

Just now, kbone1234 said:

 

That makes sense. Thanks a lot for the explanation instead of just telling me its good or shit. lol

lol it's what i do. 

now here is the part where you are going to hate me :) everything I said may not actually be the case for you. Again sims are aimed at absolute top lvls of play, assuming perfect itemization, stats, rotation, etc. At lower levels you may see certain things being better in live play than what the sims say. So you may actually find, clawing shadows does more dps for you right now. if thats the case by all means go for it. 

however, at least with unholy i can guess with certainty that it probably won't. It simply because unholy was built with far too many synergies and pairings specifically because of the apocalypse ability. so in theory with frost or blood you could see greater fluctuation in options, with unholy its unlikely

[kbone1234 0]

Just now, demonardvark said:

lol it's what i do. 

now here is the part where you are going to hate me :) everything I said may not actually be the case for you. Again sims are aimed at absolute top lvls of play, assuming perfect itemization, stats, rotation, etc. At lower levels you may see certain things being better in live play than what the sims say. So you may actually find, clawing shadows does more dps for you right now. if thats the case by all means go for it. 

however, at least with unholy i can guess with certainty that it probably won't. It simply because unholy was built with far too many synergies and pairings specifically because of the apocalypse ability. so in theory with frost or blood you could see greater fluctuation in options, with unholy its unlikely

 

Yeah after what you said I kind of realized how much synergy Castigator has with everything. I figured it was the better talent but I saw a lot of people asking the same question so I was thinking maybe I had the wrong idea.. guess not lol.

 

Thanks