necrotic plague

[Trollkiller 0]

In the talent selection here for dk says that necrotic plague is the choice to go if target can not stand in defile for its full duration. How true is this and taking this is true, will the play style of maintaining the disease at 15 stacks through festering strike yield better dps than simply reapply the disease through outbreak?

[Salazore 0]

In my opionion Taking nercrotic Plauge is the best choice for an unholy dk it is easier to maintian with festering strike and your pet builds the stacks for you and once I apply it with plauge strike I just go between scourge strike and festring strikes I don't Even worry about plauge strike anymore once the Nercrotic Plauge is on the target.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Salazore

[demonardvark 556]

please refer to this previously made topic

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/8095-necrotic-plague-shines-in-certain-scenarios/

 

tldr

 

Necrotic Plague is exceedingly viable for both unholy DKs and Frost Dks. Whilst defile is strong if the boss moves out of it you have a huge dps loss. While using necrotic however, you need to have unholy blight as your tier 1 talent. This auto boost your plague to 15 stacks on a boss. If your diseases fall off at some point as unholy, boom pop unholy and you are good to go.

 

As frost necrotic is useful to the 1 hand playstyle. You spam howling blast so much your stacks build quick. I do not recommend necrotic plague for 2h dks.

 

Also, necrotic is strongest for unholy dks. Your plaguebearer passive does effect it. So on frost I see necrotic at 15 stacks ticking in the high 3k vs as unholy it ticking in the high 6ks.

[Storm 426]

I haven't tried necrotic with unholy recently, but I did some testing with 2H frost with both plague bearer, and unholy blight, and I saw at least a 1k dps drop compared to defile. 

 

I've heard from a few people that they've seen unholy DK's doing a lot of dps with necrotic plague though, so I'll have to do some testing with it.

[demonardvark 556]

I haven't tried necrotic with unholy recently, but I did some testing with 2H frost with both plague bearer, and unholy blight, and I saw at least a 1k dps drop compared to defile. 

 

I've heard from a few people that they've seen unholy DK's doing a lot of dps with necrotic plague though, so I'll have to do some testing with it.

 

Unholy's necrotic hits a lot harder than frosts and with festering strike it should never fall off, combined with unholy blight to get an insta 15 stacks, its power is undeniable. With 1h frost is does amazing damage as well. Single target you will dip about 1k vs 2h however on aoe fights or multi add fights your dps gets insane, 1h necrotic frost I average about 26k in aoe fights (at 630 ilvl).

 

Again though for 2h frost, necrotic= garbage. You just can't build up the disease fast enough to keep it competitive.

[Storm 426]

I think for this week I'm going to go back to Unholy, and I'll definitely try necrotic plague. I did heroic Kargath, and Twins last night and was 92nd, and 97th percentile on them as Frost, but the difference between 90th+ percentile frost and 90th percentile unholy on most fights is 2-3k dps. 

[demonardvark 556]

I think for this week I'm going to go back to Unholy, and I'll definitely try necrotic plague. I did heroic Kargath, and Twins last night and was 92nd, and 97th percentile on them as Frost, but the difference between 90th+ percentile frost and 90th percentile unholy on most fights is 2-3k dps. 

 

You should see pretty amazing dps on all fights except for butcher, even then on pure single target, i usually end up around 4th in dps

[Jasonkay 0]

 

 

 

Unholy's necrotic hits a lot harder than frosts and with festering strike it should never fall off, combined with unholy blight to get an insta 15 stacks, its power is undeniable. With 1h frost is does amazing damage as well. Single target you will dip about 1k vs 2h however on aoe fights or multi add fights your dps gets insane, 1h necrotic frost I average about 26k in aoe fights (at 630 ilvl).

 

Again though for 2h frost, necrotic= garbage. You just can't build up the disease fast enough to keep it competitive.

i must be doing something wrong if it never falls off as after a couple of FS refreshes the duration at 15 stacks only lasts about 6 seconds and that is longer than the FS Cd's if you have over spent.... 

[demonardvark 556]

 

 

 

 

Unholy's necrotic hits a lot harder than frosts and with festering strike it should never fall off, combined with unholy blight to get an insta 15 stacks, its power is undeniable. With 1h frost is does amazing damage as well. Single target you will dip about 1k vs 2h however on aoe fights or multi add fights your dps gets insane, 1h necrotic frost I average about 26k in aoe fights (at 630 ilvl).

 

Again though for 2h frost, necrotic= garbage. You just can't build up the disease fast enough to keep it competitive.

i must be doing something wrong if it never falls off as after a couple of FS refreshes the duration at 15 stacks only lasts about 6 seconds and that is longer than the FS Cd's if you have over spent.... 

 

 

no for unholy its good that it never falls off (it shouldn't) for frost however it will. Unholy blight is used in "my" suggested unholy rotation because A it boosts you immediately to 15 stacks and B in case of derping (which i may or may not do a lot) it allows you to recover from your mistake. 

 

for 1h frost its to insta boost inbetween periods where it will fall off. due to the nature of the rotation you will always be applying stacks, but there will be those time where np is about to fall off and unholy blight is off cd so you can pop it the second you lose your stacks

 

and again as 2h frosty i don't recommend np

[Kadill 0]

All of this, and the general unholy guide on the main icy veins site seems to be solely in regard to raiding. What would you suggest when you are going between trash and bosses constantly in dungeons, such as in challenge modes? Would it essentially be just if things will move out a lot in that dungeon = necrotic and if they will be stationary mostly overall = defile?

[Deathdoc 0]

Short Fights Defile reins supreme. Doesn't screw with your rotation and your going to use DnD anyways to kill mobs so might as well as get the most bang for buck

[Kadill 0]

Short Fights Defile reins supreme. Doesn't screw with your rotation and your going to use DnD anyways to kill mobs so might as well as get the most bang for buck

Just to clarify, I am asking specifically in the situation of playing unholy in CMs, going for gold. And from the tips on the previous thread about this, I was going to use unholy blight (I think that's it) to get stacks up to fifteen on the groups in seconds. Then, swap to defile for boss and plague leech if the swap is available. I suspect it will also largely depends on how large of groups we plan on pulling in each dungeon. Am I right?

[Impurex 5]

Since I couldn't find any decent maths on my google search I did it myself. I'm only doing this for Unholy spec since I don't know anything about frost and it doesn't seem worth it.

 

Unholy DK's single target

Assuming you keep NP up at 15 stacks (bossfights)

 

NP deals 810%AP over 30 seconds (2.25 x 15 stacks x 15 ticks x 1.6 ebon plaguebringer)

BP + FF deals  756.48%AP (23.64 x 10 ticks x 1.6 ebon plaguebringer x 2 diseases) 

Defile deals 311.14%AP (27.5 x 1.025^5 average grow buff x 10 ticks)

 

Now there are things that change these values depening on fights/gear/skill.

NP is affected by both mastery and ebon plaguebringer fully

BP is affected by both, FF only by ebon plaguebringer and Defile only by mastery

NP is easier to get high uptimes on than Defile (depending on boss movement)

 

The factors you can influence are Mastery and Defile uptime. Ebon Plaguebringer is entirely passive.

This leads me to the following formula where M is mastery and U is defile uptime.

810M = 378.24M + 311.14MU + 378.24

NP     =       BP     +       DEF    +    FF

 

Simplified:

431.8M = 311.14MU + 378.24

 

Fill in your mastery, and you can figure out the Defile uptime you need for it to be worth it. It's not that big actually.

 

I'll post some examples later, need to get to work. Just wanted to put it down so that I don't have to do the math again.

[Raedwulf 0]

Just to clarify, I am asking specifically in the situation of playing unholy in CMs, going for gold. And from the tips on the previous thread about this, I was going to use unholy blight (I think that's it) to get stacks up to fifteen on the groups in seconds. Then, swap to defile for boss and plague leech if the swap is available. I suspect it will also largely depends on how large of groups we plan on pulling in each dungeon. Am I right?

I'm afraid that this strategy wouldn't work, as you can not switch talents in the middle of a challenge mode. What you start with is what you have to use for the whole thing. In my experience with CM's (which is admittedly from getting golds in MoP, haven't started getting golds in WoD yet), it's the trash pulls that are often the tricky part. This is where groups are often the most stressed because you're often chain-pulling as much as the healer's mana will allow to cut down on time. I would think that defile+gorefiend's grasp would give you the most bang for your buck in those situations and defile's boss damage is usually pretty good, as well.

[drumsmani 47]

Did they change it in WoD to disallow talent changes inside of CMs? Pretty sure you could do it in MoP CMs, but it is not very optimal since you can do it only between pulls and usually you are running at that time. 

[demonardvark 556]

Since I couldn't find any decent maths on my google search I did it myself. I'm only doing this for Unholy spec since I don't know anything about frost and it doesn't seem worth it.

 

Unholy DK's single target

Assuming you keep NP up at 15 stacks (bossfights)

 

NP deals 810%AP over 30 seconds (2.25 x 15 stacks x 15 ticks x 1.6 ebon plaguebringer)

BP + FF deals  756.48%AP (23.64 x 10 ticks x 1.6 ebon plaguebringer x 2 diseases) 

Defile deals 311.14%AP (27.5 x 1.025^5 average grow buff x 10 ticks)

 

Now there are things that change these values depening on fights/gear/skill.

NP is affected by both mastery and ebon plaguebringer fully

BP is affected by both, FF only by ebon plaguebringer and Defile only by mastery

NP is easier to get high uptimes on than Defile (depending on boss movement)

 

The factors you can influence are Mastery and Defile uptime. Ebon Plaguebringer is entirely passive.

This leads me to the following formula where M is mastery and U is defile uptime.

810M = 378.24M + 311.14MU + 378.24

NP     =       BP     +       DEF    +    FF

 

Simplified:

431.8M = 311.14MU + 378.24

 

Fill in your mastery, and you can figure out the Defile uptime you need for it to be worth it. It's not that big actually.

 

I'll post some examples later, need to get to work. Just wanted to put it down so that I don't have to do the math again.

 

Dem Maths, 

 

There is one factor though that you have to add into your calculations, multistrike. Multistrike allows your dots to have a chance to tick again. So, we can crudely say np ticks every 2 seconds so 30 ticks per minute. At 50% multi strike assuming perfect math we get 45 ticks per minute. 

[Deathdoc 0]

Ok so this week for two of the bosses in Heroic, (Brackenspore, and Twins) I decided to use necrotic plague and compare it to last week were I was using Defile. ilvl between this week and last week would be about 655 to 658 so I don't believe that would cause a significant sway in preformance. As noted the TOP DPS unholy dk's in both fights are Using Deflie regardless, but I wanted to see the difference myself and to see what I can make work.

 

For Twins the DPS was small increase over using Defile, the difference of less then 60dps. Both fights lasted upto 7mins. Average Damage done with NP was 4208 /w 315 ticks of damage (Excluding MS ticks); Death and Decay Avg DMG was 1597 /w 254 ticks. Damage done with BP and FF was 4800 and 3268 with a combination for 8068 with BP 227ticks and FF 458 ticks. Defile did avg dmg of 4499 with 192 ticks. There were some human error in my preformance with NP as it was only hitting targets less then 90% of the time, this was due to not being able pay attention during movement phases and NP dropping off the boss. Solution i need to work for myself is to have WeakAuras play a Sound when NP is about a second or 2 from dropping. But even if that was the case and I had NP up for 98% of the fight, I Still don't believe it would have been a huge increase in Overall DPS. The biggest improvement outside the NP/Defile, was the split between BB's on targets, with the first fight, I had about 10 missed BB's that only hit one target. But with second fight I only missed 2 BBs that didn't hit both targets.

 

Blackenspore when I get more time.

[demonardvark 556]

Ok so this week for two of the bosses in Heroic, (Brackenspore, and Twins) I decided to use necrotic plague and compare it to last week were I was using Defile. ilvl between this week and last week would be about 655 to 658 so I don't believe that would cause a significant sway in preformance. As noted the TOP DPS unholy dk's in both fights are Using Deflie regardless, but I wanted to see the difference myself and to see what I can make work.

 

For Twins the DPS was small increase over using Defile, the difference of less then 60dps. Both fights lasted upto 7mins. Average Damage done with NP was 4208 /w 315 ticks of damage (Excluding MS ticks); Death and Decay Avg DMG was 1597 /w 254 ticks. Damage done with BP and FF was 4800 and 3268 with a combination for 8068 with BP 227ticks and FF 458 ticks. Defile did avg dmg of 4499 with 192 ticks. There were some human error in my preformance with NP as it was only hitting targets less then 90% of the time, this was due to not being able pay attention during movement phases and NP dropping off the boss. Solution i need to work for myself is to have WeakAuras play a Sound when NP is about a second or 2 from dropping. But even if that was the case and I had NP up for 98% of the fight, I Still don't believe it would have been a huge increase in Overall DPS. The biggest improvement outside the NP/Defile, was the split between BB's on targets, with the first fight, I had about 10 missed BB's that only hit one target. But with second fight I only missed 2 BBs that didn't hit both targets.

 

Blackenspore when I get more time.

 

Using your math Necrotic plague did a total of 1,325,520 damage vs defile 863,808. There is a hefty difference there. Now, the question is the perceived dps. The total damage of necrotic plague would be more but potentially show less dps. At this point I'm sorta done working on this phenom, I'm always top dps now rolling necrotic and it works for me, maybe not other people. The biggest problem at the end of the day is boss moving out of defile and you lose tremendous amounts of dps. Plus now with frost 2h being the big dog on campus, unholy is now middle of the pack. So...... yeah :D 

[dean771 3]

Using your math Necrotic plague did a total of 1,325,520 damage vs defile 863,808. There is a hefty difference there.

Does that take into acount different t1 talent choices? There are gains to be made with defile outside pure disease vs dnd

[Deathdoc 0]

Plus now with frost 2h being the big dog on campus, unholy is now middle of the pack. So...... yeah

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/6#class=DeathKnight&difficulty=4 Yea... No not quite.

 

Also sorry forgot to link comparison, here we go: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/compare/2bB6X9C4Zn7jfJMg/KpJwmNTyDH2AYftB#type=damage-done

 

And it would be:

BP + FF + Defile = 2.71m, Fight rounded up to 8mins for .33m damage per/min rounded to 7min = 2.37m 

-vs-

NP + D&D = 1.74m

[Storm 426]

I was going to go back unholy to test some stuff, but I only got a few attempts in and ended up having to tank, which meant changing my second spec back to blood, but I definitely saw at least a 1k dps decrease with necrotic plague on the couple of fights I did. I think any gains from NP would still be very situational especially if you're comparing it to using defile on cd, combined more usage of plague leech.

[drumsmani 47]

NP on Ko'ragh is a joke as in, it is funny how much the adds get wrecked with a high duration 15-stack NP. I don't even blood boil much when the adds come out due to fear of peeling off aggro or killing them outside of void zone. The debuff just jumps passively to one of them and then they share it amongst themselves and get wrecked.

 

I tried extending this to Imperator as well and it felt meh. Of course I died early in Phase4 which is where I was anticipating most damage increase with the replication adds. I think it would be worth it for Mythic Imperator since Phase4 lasts for 2/3rd of the fight duration. So for now, I'm going to go back to defile and blood boil spam.

 

An interesting thing that I noticed while playing with NP on LFR was that the split version of Tectus that came out of the ground seemed to carry the remaining NP duration from the main guy. But we will need to sacrifice a lot of BB to keep a high NP running and that might equate to a overall loss in DPS.

[Storm 426]

How long and how many additional adds are up definitely seems to be the key. Defile does a lot of damage for 10 seconds, then it's on cooldown for 20 seconds after expiring until you can use it again. If what you're defiling dies in 10 seconds or shortly afterwards then defile is going to do a lot more dps than spreading a 15 stack necrotic plague. Necrotic plague will only really be a gain if it keeps jumping to multiple targets for 20-30 seconds, or if adds are too spread out to get them all in one defile.

 

You also have to take into account the loss of plague leech if you're trying to keep 15 stacks rolling in a single target situation, which is at least a 500dps loss. During aoe you can plague leech though because the high stacks will just spread back to your target from another add.

[drumsmani 47]

When I was using defile, I used to put it under the boss when he is recharging or sometimes hold-off until the adds are gathered inside the void zone, but there was also the issue even in non-add phase where the boss randomly jumps to ranged to put debuff and such and my defile going to waste.

 

With NP, you want the remaining duration to be at least as long as the adds are going to be alive, so I try to keep around 25s+ duration running as he goes to recharge his barrier and by the time the adds are gathered up by the tank, at least one of them have the debuff anyway and that seems enough.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/3DvfHwqgxcnarbdz#fight=17&type=damage-done&source=7

Edited January 2, 2015 by drumsmani