I was kiting magmaw adds the other day in frost spec and (being new to it) they caught me twice through the fight. Whatever thing they infect you with slows you. If I hadn't specced into on a pale horse, it would have been much harder. Sure for top end guilds and super top end players on known content, then speccing out of it and into endless winter may provide more utility. But for the rest of us, I reckon it is worthwhile.

In all fairness , this is a thread on maximizing your DPS potential and not your raid utility. If you are expected to kite adds, then Chilblains is a no-brainer for any frost spec. That is a given. However, there are also a couple fights where Chilblains is something you do not want in your spec simply because they are wasted points.

If you don't have the luxury of running a kiting offspec, taking the point(s) out of Butchery and going 2/3 Epidemic is the way to go simply because there are no other options available. You can't touch Virulence because your FF damage to adds on Magmaw is huge, more so on heroic difficulty. You can't take points from Endless Winter because it's the only viable option to move further down the frost tree. Even if it were possible to take them out, having a free interrupt is crucial in many fights, especially 10 man. If you have a kiting offspec, you might be able to go 0/3 Epidemic depending on the fight. However, I make it a point to keep FF on all boss targets for the physical damage debuff (Brittle Bones) if there are no Arms Warrs, Combat Rogues or Hunter ravager pets on the target. The longer FF lasts on the target, the less you have to reapply via Outbreak or HB. Finally, taking points from Bladed Armor isn't the most optimal decision. In my current gear it provides ~115 AP, which is quantifiable DPS output.

As an addendum to that, On a Pale Horse should never be taken in any spec. It's utterly useless in PvE unless there's a fight where you are consistency slowed/snared by something that is not an aura and is mitigable. You shouldn't be anywhere near adds when you're kiting (Magmaw/Conclave). Also, I was under the impression that dazes were unmitigable. They are coded as snares, but cannot be broken or cancelled by anything other than immunities like Ice Block and Divine Shield. Regardless, it doesn't charge the fact that you should never be near the adds to begin with.

The question asked, however, was about maximizing DPS while picking up required utility. On that subject I think we've come to the conclusion that 2/3 Epidemic is the way to go.

I should have quoted several posts on the previous page that insisted on Chilblains being in the OP as an optimal spec. Not to beat a dead horse, but the point being made stated that Chilblains was essential to any raid group. This is not true. If you are using Chilblains on 100% of the fights, you are losing DPS and in some cases, creating problems for tanks and other CC classes by slowing mobs that shouldn't be slowed. At any rate, the way you spec while kiting is different for different circumstances. I would still take 2/3 or 3/3 Epidemic for the sole fact that it allows you to have higher disease uptime on boss targets via Outbreak. This not only improves your personal DPS, but provides a longer Brittle Bones debuff on the target in the event that you have no other classes that provide +4% physical.

As an addendum to the kiting discussion, people kiting as DW need to be wary of hit cap. If you hit 8% on your character sheet with Nerves of Cold Steel, you are still not capped on spell hit; which affects Outbreak, Pestilence, Hungering Cold, Howling Blast and Mind Freeze for Frost. While it is unlikely, there are still places where a Howling Blast may miss a target and force you to double up and hit it again. For something like Heroic Conclave, forcing yourself to Spell Hit cap is pretty much a necessity, as the adds Toxic Spore pulse will kill you if they are in range. I would say for fights where you are the sole interrupter, forcing the hit cap should be a priority as well. Some examples would be: Arcanotron casts, Arcane Storms on Maloriak, Depravity on Heroic Cho'gall, and Blast Nova for Nefarian. Any other interrupts you may do are more trivial and shouldn't justify adjusting your spec and gear.

I the update says that all non damaging interrupts will always hit, so that excludes Strangulate. Granted you should never be in a rotation using Strangulate, but still worth remembering imo.

In regards to getting chilblains, I drop different talents bases on what role I'm playing. For throne and magmaw, where all I do is kite adds, i get Lichborne so if I need it I have an emergency heal, and I drop 1 point from Endless Winter to get that, and then move 2 points from Imp FP to get chilblains. my spec looks something like this:
WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie.

For Chogal, Maloriak and Omnitron, I'm still full time DPS but the snare is nice as well, and i still have to get inturrupts so i keep endless winter and just swap Imp FP for chilblains, leading to this spec:
WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie.

2 things: 1 i've RARELY found myself either out of RP or waiting on runes after dropping a FS or two, so I have not missed the extra RP from imp FP, secondly along the same lines I'd rather have some extra DnD damage on adds, than 1 extra RP every 5 sec.

Take em or leave em, but ive found these 2 specs to be the most fluid feeling ones for needing to get chilblains for raids.

I would recommend not dropping 2 points in Imp FP. The 5% straight bonus dmg while in FP is going to be much more potent than 10% buff to DnD and you really don't need 3/3 in in epidemic if you're timing is right. I would suggest this instead:

2H - WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie

DW - WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie

Is anyone aware of which of our abilities, if any, use spell crit instead of melee crit? After ~3000 HB's and ~8000 FF ticks, I had a ~1.3% higher crit rate on HB than FF. I take this to mean that HB uses melee crit and FF (and presumably BP) would be on spell crit. Is this correct?

That was with no buffs on level 1 target dummies (to avoid boss crit suppression, and I didn't care about the actual crit chance, rather just knowing which ones applied). My melee crit was at 4.8% and my spell crit was at 4.22%. While statistically, the confidence interval with only 3000 HB's was too large to be perfectly conclusive that it was in fact critting more often, it was close enough.

If you're playing 2H you'll be in unholy presence, so all you get out of imp FP is 4% RP generation, making it rather lackluster.

You can presence swap to aoe adds but chogall/omnotron adds tend to die quickly enough for the swap to/back to be a dps loss in my experience, especially since you're aoeing off of the boss.

If kiting in blood/unholy pres, epidemic is worthless so I tend to go with WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie. if playing 2H. The butchery point makes up for some of the RP loss and 2/2 imp BT is (this patch) pretty much 15% more howling blasts. You won't be killing conclave adds if kiting and it's pretty much a wash on magmaw adds.

I've been getting better DPS, both from SimCraft and training dummies, if on the OP's priority list, FS and BS trade places. Always having a Blood rune up means RE always get me a Frost/Unholy rune, which makes for more Oblits. Does this apply to everyone, or is it just a peculiarity of my gear?

Also, it's been mentioned before, but SimCraft doesn't agree with the OP's stat weights, and following the thread, I can't exactly understand if there's a consensus, for DW, at least. My impression is that it's haste > mastery = crit, despite crit having higher simulated worth. My numbers from Simcraft point hit after yellow cap as slightly higher than mastery, but I forgot to take the spell hit cap into consideration, so my results might be slightly off.

Looking at KM procs in simc. Its my understanding KM can proc from both weapons at 5 PPM, so for dw frost, I'd expect ~20% of melee hits to generate a KM. But in simc, I see 288 MH + 288 OH attacks (average) with only 48 procs. Even if its only MH which procs, 48 is still fairly low.

For 2h frost, I expected 30% of melee hits to generate KM procs, and the number support that.