Plague Leech Question for 2H Frost

[Shaasar 0]

Obviously, PL is the best choice in tier 1 for frost, but I'm wondering when the optimal time to use the ability is.  Generally, I wait until Outbreak is off CD and then Plague Leech directly into an Obliterate followed by Outbreak again.  However, since Plague Leech is about half the CD of Outbreak, it's up way more often.  I'm wondering if I should just PL immediately again if it's off CD, or if I should back off and wait till Outbreak is off CD as well to sync the two abilities.

 

I tested the difference between the two and it doesn't make that much of a difference in practice, but I'm wondering if there's a way we're "supposed" to do it, or if there's one that's theoretically better.

 

(By the way, if you PL/OB combo during the Butcher's Bounding Cleave, the combo is up EXACTLY as the next Bounding Cleave comes out.  It really helps to fill the hole in the rotation that happens when you get knocked back :) )

 

 

[Storm 426]

Glyph outbreak, and use plague leech on cooldown, and reapply diseases with your 30RP outbreak. You still gain the effect of your L60 talent by spending RP on outbreak, so there is no loss there. and essentially you're turning 30RP that would be used on a frost strike into 2 runes for an obliterate instead, which is a huge dps gain.

 

The only thing it makes more difficult is that you can't outbreak on pull, but what I've been doing to compensate is using Army at 4-5 seconds on the pull timer, so I still have enough RP at pull for an outbreak.

[Shaasar 0]

I took a look at your parses and they are not all that close to mine.  I think glyphing Outbreak is not all that smart of an idea, because you lose so much RP and the resulting FS/BT adds more to the rotation than the double death does.  I think I'll stick with what I'm doing now.

 

Edit: I think that's a good thought, but I think it evens out over the course of a fight.  That's all I'm trying to say.

Edited December 26, 2014 by Shaasar

[Storm 426]

Are you looking at my unholy logs or my frost logs? because I'm 80th-90th percentile on every fight as frost.

 

glyphed outbreak is definitely a gain. if you reduce all the math it literally comes down to turning 1 frost strike into 1 obliterate instead.

 

glyphed outbreak also count towards blood tap charges. there's not one thing about it that makes you lose anything anywhere for 2H frost.

[Shaasar 0]

I'm 95+ for every single fight except Ko'ragh and Tectus, where I'm 90.  I wasn't aware that outbreak gave blood tap charges, I should have thought of that because technically it becomes a runic power expenditure.  I'll take a look at it again but I'm close to my theoretical cap on most fights according to the sims that I run.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/2799742/latest/#boss=0if you want to take a look.

[Axis 2]

AIUI, you have the following options:

PL + unglyphed outbreak, once per minute.

PL + unglyphed outbreak, PL + PS, over that minute.

PL + glyphed outbreak, twice a minute.

So... choice two is almost certainly an improvement over choice one. It gains you half an Obliterate, plus the PS damage, at the cost of a few seconds of disease ticks.

Comparing two and three, you're losing *two* Frost Strikes, and the Plague Strike damage component, and gaining an extra half-Obliterate, and maybe two ticks of disease uptime.

I suspect that's not worthwhile, personally - although I certainly appreciated the convenience of the glyphed Outbreak, when I tried it.

(I'm running UH right now, so I can't easily test this, or see exact numbers).

[Storm 426]

It's actually 1.2 frost strikes. 30rp for outbreak vs. 25rp for 1 frost strike.

 

My average Obliterate is about 40k, average frost strike is 20k, frost fever tick is 3.2k, blood plague 2.3k. plague strike I haven't used in such a long time I'm using Shaasar's log to assume 4.1k

 

Option 1:

once per minute you use PL + unglyphed outbreak. you gain 1 free obliterate. once per minute. 40k/60 seconds = Net Gain +666 dps

 

Option 2:

 You gain 2.4 obliterates per minute (40k * 2.4 / 60) = 1600 dps gain. but you are plague striking 1.4 times per minute which is a loss of (0.7 Obliterate 28k - 1.4 plague strike 5740 )/60 = 371dps loss from plague strikes. 1600 - 371 = Net Gain +1229 dps

 

Option 3:

You gain 2.4 obliterates per minute  (40k * 2.4 / 60) = 1600 dps gain. but you are losing 1.2 frost strikes 2.4 times per minute = 2.88 frost strikes lost per minute. 2.88* 20k / 60 = 960 dps loss. 1600-960 = Net Gain +640 dps

 

So actually, now that I've done the mathe it seems that Option 2 is probably way ahead of the other options. the only thing I'm not taking into account here is any gain or loss of GCD's, but that shouldn't affect the math much unless you're running so much haste you're resource capped. I think the mistake I made originally was not taking into account that both options 1 and 2 do get the 1 free outbreak per minute, whereas Option 3 has to spend 30rp every time.

[Shaasar 0]

Choice 2 is pretty much exactly what I do.  Since BP wears off inside that minute you need to weave in at least one PS to compensate and make PL usable.  It feels just incredibly awkward to lose that FS when using glyphed outbreak.

[Storm 426]

Updated my math again because on option 2 I had 2.4 plague strikes when it's actually 1.4 if figuring for the free outbreak. I'm going to go back to using option 2 since it's clearly a substantial dps increase.

 

The one other thing I can say about Option 3 though, is it did seem to help me with managing killing machine procs. Less RP spent on FS = less opportunities to misuse a killing machine proc. but there's no way that would make up for a 600dps difference.

[FoxBoulder 2]

I feel like the gap between option 2 and 3 is slightly smaller do to PL having a 25 second cooldown. Over a 5 minute fight it would net you 2 extra PLs.

 

Now my maths are weak (I was an art major) so I might be wrong. 

 

Also this all assumes I am using PL correctly.... maybe its better to PL on cooldown even without Glyphed outbreak,add in more PS and only use outbreak when it lines up? I can't imagine that would be the case but I've been wrong before.

[Axis 2]

The only other downside to option 2 is that you've not got frost fever back until you get a Rime proc, so it'll be up for the next PL, but you could easily lose a few ticks first, and that's not nothing...

I think it's still far enough ahead to be worth skipping the glyph, though.

(Shame. I love the glyphed version in Blood.)

[Storm 426]

 

I feel like the gap between option 2 and 3 is slightly smaller do to PL having a 25 second cooldown. Over a 5 minute fight it would net you 2 extra PLs.

 

In both option 2 and 3 you're using PL on cooldown. the difference is in how you're reapplying diseases after leech. Option 1 where you only plague leech when you have outbreak is losing 1.4 plague leeches per minute compared to the other two.

 

The only other downside to option 2 is that you've not got frost fever back until you get a Rime proc, so it'll be up for the next PL, but you could easily lose a few ticks first, and that's not nothing...

 

There's a 45% chance of rime proc per obliterate, so sometimes you'll immediately get a rime proc with the runes you just gained from plague leech, which means you'd maybe lose 1 tick of frost fever compared to glyphed outbreak. worst case it may be 5-10 seconds before you get a rime proc. if we assume an average of somewhere around (5 seconds) before you reapply frost fever. (x 3.2k) per tick (x 1.4) plague leeches per minute while outbreak is on cooldown, and (/ 60) seconds, you'd have an average net loss of about 373dps from lost frost fever ticks. That still leaves option 2 about 250 dps ahead of options 1 and 3.

[FoxBoulder 2]

So I guess my statement still stands.... the gap is much closer than 600dps loss by glyphing outbreak. Toss in some rng and player skill and I feel they are about equal. Also, our stat priority comes into play on which is better (edit to clarify: as in since vers/multi increase the damage of oblit. more than say PS, does that also change the math?)... I started to type my thoughts here and contradicted myself like 3 times in a sentence so I figure I'd just bring up that what stats you have stacked might end up also making that 250 dps margin even smaller. Thoughts?

 

As a side note; Storm. I've been rocking your frost weakaura and loving it. Thanks for the time/effort you put into it

Edited December 28, 2014 by FoxBoulder

[dean771 3]

 Toss in some rng and player skill and I feel they are about equal.

Why would rng/player skill effect one and not the other?

[FoxBoulder 2]

Personally I think using the glyph makes the rotation much easier, thus it would be less affected by player skill..... Fair point about the rng.

[Storm 426]

In actual fights I seem to be doing higher dps with the glyph than without it. Imperator is one of my worst fights because of the movement and downtime in between transitions, but it seems like I struggle to stay over 20k unglyphed, but glyphed I'm easily doing 21k+

[Drudgery 0]

Plague leech should definitely be used on cooldown since its a massive DPS gain but it all depends on your rune management and how you manipulate a scenario so that you never have "unused" runes.  

 

I pug all my raids, so take what I say with a pinch of salt, but I'm confident with my dps.  I have also yet to have used the outbreak glyph...and its something I am going to try in the future.

 

This rotation centres of using plague strike before PL is off CD...this should always be a priority.

 

Due to your free Howling blast proc, which should be prioritised above an Obliterate/FS and when Outbreak and PL is on CD, you should look at reapplying Blood Plague with Plague strike whenever you're in a scenario when you have an odd number of runes and you are able to obliterate within 2 seconds or less and especially when KM is up.

 

Things will not always go to plan and due to the RNG nature of procs...you're not always guaranteed the necessary rime proc for that free howling blast, which is very important in this rotation. 

 

During initial burst phase....your rotation should be

 

- Army (with 6 seconds left on the DBM timer) Outbreak

 

- Pre-pot (1/2 seconds left of the countdown)

 

- Outbreak

 

Then interchange with

 

- Obliterate/sensible placement of defile (5 runes - and its this odd set of runes which allows the re-application of blood plague via plague strike)

 

Now the complex part.

 

- If the first Oblit procs a rime, then cast plague leech before you cast howling blast, this is necessary for the re-application of both diseases, one of which comes free due to the proc ...if it doesn't then cast your second Oblit and hope it procs rime and then plague leech....and reapply your blood plague with plague strike.  Now this is the ideal scenario but you'll find that this is not always the case.

 

- Rune dump with frost strike and blood tap

 

- try and time your KM procs with oblit

 

- blood tap and ensure you've exhausted any more obliterates....and wait for all runes to be on a 4/5+ second CD

 

- cast empowered rune and priortise 3 massive oblits....try and dump runes in between if no KM procs are up

 

Then rinse and repeat.

 

Things that a necessary

 

Get a UI that tells you how many seconds you have left for your next obliterate.  During any scenario when your target has only frost fever, time your plague strike as mentioned above...and ideally before PL is on CD.

 

 

TL;DR

 

Make sure you reapply diseases through procs/Outbreak/plague strike before PL is off CD.  Try and manipulate a scenario so that you're always on an odd number of runes when diseases are off the target.

[Drudgery 0]

"and ideally before PL is on CD."

 

Should be "off"