[WotLK] In-combat gem swapping for top DPS parses

Community WoW Community Council
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For some time now, I believe top parsing unholy DKs have been swapping out their meta gem during combat to increase their DPS (I say “I believe” because it is hard to verify this simply by looking at WarcraftLogs). However, this process seems to have become more automated with the use of addons so that the player doesn’t really have to do much of anything.

Here is one such WeakAura that aims to help accomplish this goal. It supposedly waits for a haste meta proc, then switches to the crit meta, then back to haste when the ICD is back up, back to crit, and so on. I can’t find any reports of it not working anymore in the unholy DK discord, so I’ll just assume it’s still working.

Why this should be changed, imo

  1. This doesn’t meaningfully increase the skill cap of the class. It’s just, do you know that you’re supposed to do this? Okay, so you download the WA, buy some extra meta gems as part of your raid consumes checklist, and congratulations, you are now properly executing the technique while not changing your in-combat decision flowchart at all.

  2. The existence of this “technique” means that you need to shell out a lot of extra gold per raid night if you want to give yourself a shot at the absolute highest DPS possible. Thundering Skyflare Diamonds are currently at a market price of 48g on my server according to TSM, and Chaotic Skyflare Diamonds are currently at a market price of 21g. So, for the 15 bosses you would want to do this on this tier, generously assuming 2 swaps per boss kill, you’re looking at a minimum total of an additional 1035g per raid night. But for some bosses you may even want 4-6 swaps.

  3. Remember that cut gems do not stack. Players using this technique must also grief their own bag space, or get their raid’s jewelcrafters to cut them gems on the spot prior to a boss pull.

  4. Changing this nerfs unholy DKs, which is a good thing imo. Although, maybe this is also another warrior nerf as well, which would be bad. I haven’t really looked into how much other classes benefit from this.

Some possible solutions

  • Make it so that no gems (including non-meta socket gems) cannot be swapped out during combat (my preferred solution)

  • Make it so that addons cannot automatically swap out gems during combat

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Also, if the team sees the gold argument as compelling, then they should probably look at flame caps as well. They are extremely expensive on some servers. Although, personally I would argue that flame caps at least add more skill/thinking to the game, because you have to choose between a flame cap or a healthstone. Granted, it isn’t really a hard decision in Naxx, but it might be in some Ulduar fights.