Frost DPS | Cataclysm 4.0.6, This Is My Life - Page 24

Zenwhoa · 03/07/11, 7:15 PM

After doing a ton of reforging, dummy tests, and sims, I think I have figured some things out with frost. As others have started pointing out now, obviously haste is being greatly undervalued for pretty much all frost specs. I'm usually dual wield, but Saturday I tried running as 2h for our Nef attempts. I think at that point I was running around 6.5% haste with mostly crit stacked.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
This attempt we got him to 1%, so it's pretty comparable to a kill. As you can see, this attempt I switched from frost presence to unholy presence during the bloodlust, and my DPS increased substantially.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
This attempt was a kill. I was tanking adds at the start in blood presence, so my DPS is lower (it says I was not in a stance for most the fight but looking at average hits it is clear I was in FP). We bloodlusted at about the same point, but this time I did not switch stances. My DPS was significantly lower during the bloodlust.

One thing that I have noticed in all the analysis that are usually shown, bloodlust is included. This may be skewing things in favor of UP. I tried running a bunch of sims on my own profile (before the Rime fix and my item level is 359) without bloodlust and it closed the gap significantly. It appears that UP scales better with haste and that at a certain level of haste it will overtake FP. With the rime change though, FP is going to have a fair bit more room for haste gear. At around 1300 haste on my char in the sims, I found FP and UP to be fairly close in DPS without bloodlust and that frost still had more room to stack haste. What I would propose then is simply that someone write some commands in the action list to essentially dump RP and switch to UP when bloodlust is active. I think this should increase DPS for FP sims, as well as increasing the value of haste.

One other thing to consider as well - the more haste you stack, the less benefit you will likely get from bloodlust for any spec, as running 45 second sim fights with bloodlust and UP showed that even in UP you have significant RP overcapping in a 359 profile (by 2.0 a second, pre Rime change) and very little to zero wait time. And, of course, much higher DPS than FP (by ~3k).

In the sim, the value for haste in UP will likely be much higher than the value of haste in FP. If the two specs are very similar in DPS, and the scale values for haste are much higher for UP (as they likely will be), I feel like it is somewhat misleading. It appears that it would certainly be better to stack more haste and stay in UP, but this may not always be true. Because FP is more GCD restrained, stacking more haste also increases the scale values for hit and expertise, whereas this will not be as much the case for an unrestrained UP. Is there any way to show how increasing one stat value will influence the other scale factors without just trying to multiply things out yourself or resimming over and over?

One last inquiry too - when I was simming DW FP, I was having a hard time figuring out what affect hit rating was having over the 8% yellow cap. In my dummy tests, stacking hit to around spell cap seemed beneficial, but those are so variable that it can be difficult to tell sometimes.

plopinou · 03/07/11, 7:36 PM

@Zimeron

Well I didn't really tried to elaborate a new action priority list, I just tested some things here and there.
To be honest, we really miss something in simcraft that could tell us the cooldown which remains before the next blood/frost/unholy/death rune will activate. I feel that with this feature we could complexify quite a bit the priority, while gaining some dps.

Zimeron · 03/07/11, 7:41 PM

Originally Posted by plopinou

Well I didn't really tried to elaborate a new action priority list, I just tested some things here and there.
To be honest, we really miss something in simcraft that could tell us the cooldown which remains before the next blood/frost/unholy/death rune will activate. I feel that with this feature we could complexify quite a bit the priority, while gaining some dps.

I put in a ticket to get it added as my understanding of the expressions system is limited. Until another developer gets time or another user generates a patch for it, we'll have to make do with what we have.

xbit · 03/07/11, 8:32 PM

Originally Posted by Zenwhoa

Is there any way to show how increasing one stat value will influence the other scale factors without just trying to multiply things out yourself or resimming over and over?

Sort of. You still need to re-sim, but you can add custom enchants with the TCI, not sure how to do that with the GUI as I use the command line version of the sim, but if you can edit your character profile somewhere,

 # Or specify a custom 500 strength enchant
 main_hand=shalugdoom_the_axe_of_unmaking,enchant=500str

For example. You can add enchant=300haste to a relic or something that doesn't have an enchant on it, to sim the effects of adding more haste without disrupting anything else.

xbit · 03/07/11, 8:59 PM

Originally Posted by plopinou

As I said to xbit, I'll try to thoroughly test blood strike during the next days, and also see if the other abilities damage are close enough to in game numbers.

Take a look at frost strike too. I'm not sure what the exact formula for frost strike is supposed to be, but comparing WoL to sim numbers my frost strikes on live hit for ~600 more than the sim.

Zenwhoa · 03/07/11, 11:46 PM

Thank you xbit, this will make my work of re-simming a hell of a lot easier and cheaper.

I may have addressed too many issues in my first post, and I feel that the takeaway point has yet to be responded to. Zimeron said UP for 2h spec has long since been known to be superior, but I'm not sure on this. Frost has a bit more wiggle room than we may have thought, and with the sim changes to Rime and changes on the PTR, this allows for even more haste in 2h frost. My sims on my own 359 profile showed UP and FP to be very close when bloodlust was not included. Close enough that any fight where your dots are ticking on multiple monsters or there is AoE, FP would probably be superior.

My main point was just that I see no indication at all in the action list that switches players from FP to UP during bloodlust. I don't see how this could not increase DPS. I even linked my own logs showing the obvious increase in DPS by switching stances during lust. This would definitely be relevant for 1h FP as well.

Zimeron · 03/08/11, 9:47 AM

Originally Posted by Zenwhoa

My main point was just that I see no indication at all in the action list that switches players from FP to UP during bloodlust. I don't see how this could not increase DPS. I even linked my own logs showing the obvious increase in DPS by switching stances during lust. This would definitely be relevant for 1h FP as well.

Using our 372 profile for 2H Frost, adding action to start in FP and swap to UP during BL is a dps decrease. This is because the profile is unable to use all of his runes in FP.

24867  50.3%  Death_Knight_Frost_2h_T11_372
24529  49.7%  Death_Knight_Frost_2h_T11_372_swap
This was done using the standard default settings with optimal_raid=1

You may find with different gear sets that it is a DPS increase, but it's not with our current BIS profile. Feel free to test and see if you can find a gear set that benefits from the swap and increases DPS. It's important to note that currently using 406-12, presence will never consume a rune, which I have fixed in the SVN. Again since I know everyone can't build the GUI, I've uploaded a copy here: simc-406-13-r7966 -win32.zip

[e] We have 406-13 out with all the latest DK fixes, check the release notes for more information.

Titus Pullo · 03/08/11, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by Zimeron

Using our 372 profile for 2H Frost, adding action to start in FP and swap to UP during BL is a dps decrease. This is because the profile is unable to use all of his runes in FP.

24867  50.3%  Death_Knight_Frost_2h_T11_372
24529  49.7%  Death_Knight_Frost_2h_T11_372_swap
This was done using the standard default settings with optimal_raid=1

You may find with different gear sets that it is a DPS increase, but it's not with our current BIS profile. Feel free to test and see if you can find a gear set that benefits from the swap and increases DPS. It's important to note that currently using 406-12, presence will never consume a rune, which I have fixed in the SVN. Again since I know everyone can't build the GUI, I've uploaded a copy here: simc-406-13-r7966 -win32.zip

[e] We have 406-13 out with all the latest DK fixes, check the release notes for more information.

Perhaps I've misunderstood what you meant here, but changing presences no longer consumes a corresponding rune and only depletes our runic power as of 4.0. So 406-12 should be correct in how it is handling presence changes.

Silarn · 03/08/11, 1:11 PM

I think the point here is that while it is theoretically a DPS increase to switch to UP from FP during a heroism (provided that it opens up enough new attacks to overcome the delta required to make that switch superior) with as little remaining RP as possible, the spec already performs better used in UP. Which means that the whole theory is moot.

On the other hand, it may be a theoretical increase as DW frost since I believe the consensus is still that running FP is ideal. I do think you need to set up an attack priority that uses as much RP as possible before the switch, however, or you are simply wasting resources.

Keep in mind that you have to make the switch back as well, and you may end up losing attacks during that transition as well. Having as little RP during both switches is ideal, and you may not want to even use all remaining runes before switching to FP as this will leave you with a significant amount of downtime waiting in FP for your runes to regenerate.

Zimeron · 03/08/11, 1:20 PM

Originally Posted by Titus Pullo

Perhaps I've misunderstood what you meant here, but changing presences no longer consumes a corresponding rune and only depletes our runic power as of 4.0. So 406-12 should be correct in how it is handling presence changes.

Crap. It was never setup to consume all the RP, so now it costs a rune but doesn't consume RP. I'll get it fixed.

[e] Fixed, here's a copy of the CLI and GUI, note that this doesn't include the massive target_t overhaul if you're following SVN changes: MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

Zenwhoa · 03/11/11, 10:18 AM

After a ton of work, I believe I have come up with some improved priorities for frost. 1H frost gets substantially better DPS by switching to UP during bloodlusts. 2h still is better in UP, but FP is very close and actually overtakes it at lower gear levels (I believe switching stances is still consuming a rune in the current build, so this is going to increase DPS by a bit). I also haven't had time yet to make new profiles to fit the new scale factors, so it still could be possible that FP could overtake UP for 2h, but it's still unlikely at 372 levels. 2H should probably be in FP during almost any kind of AoE.

As far as priority changes, I just tried to add in things that I myself as a player try and do. Ex: I generally wait for a few procs before using my ghoul, so I changed the ghoul conditions.

My 1H Frost Presence Live - 24473 DPS
Simulationcraft Results

My 1H Frost Presence Test - 27285 DPS
Simulationcraft Results

My 2H Unholy Presence Live - 25548 DPS
My 2H Unholy Presence Test - 28844 DPS
Simulationcraft Results

Current 1H Frost Presence Live - 23877 DPS
Current 2H Unholy Presence Live - 24729 DPS
Simulationcraft Results

Current 1H Frost Presence Test - 26869 DPS
Current 2H Unholy Presence Test - 28369 DPS
Simulationcraft Results

I used the same profiles as on simulationcraft.org just for the sake of consistency.

Cloud8690 · 03/13/11, 2:06 PM

I'm having an issue with Kahories sim. Right now I'm using the legs from Al'akir. Kahories sim doesn't properly sim them though, afaik. They don't have secondary stats and I can't reforge them so my numbers are skewed.

How do I go about fixing that?

Feliska · 03/14/11, 5:32 PM

You can manually input your stats, regardless of gear equipped.
That option is under the Stat Summary tab.

xbit · 03/15/11, 2:02 AM

I've been thinking about crit vs mastery quite a bit lately for DW frost, and I cannot find a reason why mastery would be valued more than crit (at least until patch 4.1). Currently, looking at DW parses on WoL shows that about 40% of our damage is frost damage on single target fights. Mastery increases our frost damage by 2% per point, which works out to increasing 80% of our damage by 1% per point. Crit increases 100% of our damage by 1% per crit %. Since crit and mastery require the same rating to gain 1 point/1% respectively, it seems to me that crit should always be more valuable than mastery at least until 50%+ of our damage is frost damage.

An argument that I've heard against this is that KM procs make crit less valuable, but the math of that doesn't work out to much. At 5 PPM with a 2.6 speed weapon, KM has a 5 / (60 / 2.6) = 21.67% chance of proccing. Assume that our crit chance is 10%. Crit is wasted whenever we have a KM proc and what would have been a crit anyway occurring at the same time. Since these are independent events, the probability of them occurring simultaneously is simply 21.67% * 10% = 2.167%. So a little over 2% of the time our crit rating is wasted. This devalues crit by 2.167%, but based on the assumption of 40% of our damage being affected by mastery, crit is 20% more valuable. A 2.167% decrease is not enough to give mastery the lead.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning, or should DW frost DKs be stacking crit over mastery?

Pintofbrew · 03/15/11, 5:43 AM

1% Crit does not increase your output by 1%. It never has. That reasoning is deeply flawed and only accurate when considering the change from 0% crit to 1% crit. For an elaborate explanation on why this is the case, see here:

Death Knight: Cataclysm Simple Q & A