TLDR
I’m DW Frost. Did one week of Chimaeron stacking Mastery (18.86 Mastery with 8.5% Haste from Rating) and one week stacking Haste (11.29 Mastery with 16.63% Haste from Rating). Three gear changes of equal ilvl were made to stack more of my desired stat.

Fortunately enough, both parses were 254 seconds in length. Mastery raid comp included a Destruction Lock, Haste had a Moonkin.

Mastery Parse
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
19972 DPS

Haste Parse
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
21580 DPS

After trying it out myself I am going with Haste > Crit > Mastery for DW frost as indicated by SimCraft.

Haste Versus Mastery

When comparing these two stats it really comes down to frequency of rune regeneration versus a raw damage modifier. As such we can ignore crit and analyze the frequency of attacks and the average non crit hit of each attack to determine which stat is better. When calculating frequency of attacks, I ignored misses for Rune Attacks since you get the runes back. For frost strikes and melee swings I included everything.
For AVG damage I added MH and OH attacks where applicable.

Mastery

Avg Freq

OB 25805 6.20

Melee 3539 0.87

FS 17413 4.31

HB 18882 13.37

FF 3442 3.10

BP 2194 3.10

BS 8510 12.10

PS 6725 50.80

KMPPM NA 7.32

Haste
Avg Frequency

OB 25334 5.18

Melee 3393 0.78

FS 15168 3.74

HB 15705 12.10

FF 2826 3.02

BP 2236 3.06

BS 8448 13.37

PS 7023 63.50

KMPPM 8.27

Any average differences in nonfrost attacks will be attributed to RNG. Keep in mind the loop between more rune attacks and more frost strikes/hb. Faster obliterates lead to more frost strikes which leads to more obliterates to more frost strikes etc. The actual interaction is more complex than I want to try to tackle with napkin math.

When moving to Haste from Mastery we observe:
Obliterate – 19.96% Increase in Frequency.
Melee - 11.53% Increase in Frequency
Frost Strike – 15.24% Increase in Frequency, 14.80% Decrease in Avg Damage
Howling Blast – 10.49% Increase in Frequency, 20.22% Decrease in Avg Damage
Frost Fever - 21.79% Decrease in Avg Damage
KM Procs – 12.97% Increase

Blood Plague, Blood Strike and Plague Strike – not a significant enough portion of total damage to worry about.

With the wash between Frost Strikes you are looking at +20% OB Damage and +11% Melee damage versus a loss of 9% Howling Blast Damage (1.2022 Dmg/1.1019 Freq) and a 21% increase in Frost Fever Damage.

Using the percentages of total damage from the Haste Log in the first column and modifying the second column to account for the above differences gives haste a clear advantage. I even gave frost strike a +20% damage modifier like HB and FF instead of the observed 15%

Haste Mastery

OB 33.2 27.7

Melee 17.0 15.3

FS 25.7 25.7

HB 8.5 9.4

FF 5.0 6.0

Sum 89.4 84.0

Crit Versus Mastery
I’ll be using my data from the Haste Heavy Parse and mathematically adding 5% crit and 5 mastery (10% Frost Damage).

Crit Rates will be treated as a percent damage modifier such as 38% crit = (0.38 * 1.03) + 1 = 1.3914 Damage Increase. The extra 3% is the crit meta.

TLDR:I’m only adding 4.75% crit to OB and FS to account for KM critsIn the cases of FS and OB I am applying crit at 95% effectiveness to account for KM. This is derived using the following logic. Splitting my 8 KM procs per minute evenly between OB and FS and taking into account around 11 OB Per Minute and 16 Frost Strikes a Minute we have OB with 36% crit and FS at 25% crit regardless of crit rating. Using 10% crit from rating we have Obliterate at 15% crit (LotP) and FS at 20% crit (LOTP + 2 PC Bonus). Using a one roll system you would expect to get waste a normal crit on OB 5.4% of the time and a normal FS Crit 5% of the time. As you increase your crit from crit rating you are more likely
/TLDR End

Doing the math with the actual results and adding 5% crit in the 2nd column and 10% Frost Damage in the 3rd column gives crit a very slight advantage on a single target fight as indicated by SimCraft. It is clear to see that given more baseline mastery on our gear/or the 4.1 changes could easily throw the balance toward mastery.

AvgDPS 5% Crit 10% Frost
6634 6873 6634
4754 4978 4754
5168 5367 5685
1681 1747 1849
1003 1051 1104
803 841 803
769 802 769
111 116 111
20922 21775 21707

It’s glaringly obvious that Consider didn’t take something into account or simply did some math wrong when he calculated the stat weights for DW. The assertion that you are haste capped at very low numbers is simply not true although it is easy to see how you could conclude this on paper.

For simplification assume the 4.1 setup of all death runes. Given 10% haste you should have your runes recharging in 9 seconds. Use three obliterates in 4.5 seconds and you have enough RP for three Frost strikes in the next 4.5 Seconds. 4.5+ 4.5 = 9 and you are magically GCD locked without Rime or Runic Empowerment procs. Something is going on, be it latency or Rune Pushback from HB/Outbreak that is allowing you to not be capped at very high haste levels.

I can tell you from experience that with 120 Max RP and 16.5% haste I am not GCD locked if I don’t miss any rune attacks. On heroic attempts prior to the normal kill, I had some runes sitting from missing some OBs, but on the actual normal mode kill I got lucky and didn’t miss any OBs. I will be taking a point from butchery and throwing it into 130 Max RP in the future though.

Once again I can see how Consider reached his GCD lock conclusion, but anyone in blue gear can run out and stack 1200 + haste and prove this point wrong.

I am sure the first thing anyone will throw out is how this is “anecdotal”. I am a statistician working in medical device manufacturing. I know better than just about anyone that 2 data points doesn’t mean squat statistically; however, ask yourself this. Did I really just get lucky and move from 27th on the charts (where my Mastery parse would be if I didn’t bump it off) to number 1 by stacking the worst rating for DW DKs. Also note that I beat the next DW parse (#8 at the time of this writing) by around 5% (1k DPS).

Consider’s calculated stat weights for DW simply don’t hold water in the real world while SimCraft’s suggestions netted me an 8% increase. In my opinion,the haste interaction with rune regeneration and Runic Empowerment in play is simply to complex to map out with simple mathmatics. I am sure Simcraft isn’t perfect but a program that actually does some interations is simply going to do a better job than a guy with a spreadsheet when doing things like this.

In any case, stack haste and enjoy the 5-10% buff while also getting the 10% from the PTR changes. Happy Killing!

P.S. If you do haste stack you need points in runic power mastery. I did around 10 minutes on target dummy and had 14700 DPS with 0/3 and 15900 with 3/3.

Yes in Frost Presence, except for switching to Unholy during heroism.

This would only happen if all 3 of your Frost Strikes generated a rune through Runic Empowerment. Otherwise, assuming no Runic Empowerment procs it would take 21 secs for all your runes to re-activate, and leaves you with at least 3 open GCDs before any of your runes are activated. At such low levels of haste you are technically at the soft cap, but due to the RNG nature of our spec you could be at the soft haste cap at 0% haste, however that's not very realistic.

The bigger problem with the instant-GCD-capped logic as I understand it is that you get a set of 3 runes per 9s, DFU, not the full depth of 6.

This is basically the conclusion I've drawn as well. Two parses this close aren't enough to provide a solid basis for your argument even on the most predictable fights. Given the prevalence of AoE fights and fights like Atramedes with mechanics where you're stll able to use HB but not melee, Mastery is a lot better than it first appears. Patchwerk fights are pretty rare.

Recently I beat on a dummy for a while in a spec with Imp Frost Presence while in unholy presence as 2h and I found that I did not get a single extra runic power. I'm wondering if this is actually true (for example a bug where the 4% is always just rounded down and therefore never actually reaches 1 rp) or if I'm just completely mistaken? I use DDR for my runes and rp and I imagine its possible it was just a display error where the addon is somehow calculating rp on its own?
I realize that "well you just beat on a dummy and didn't get any" seems like a valid test but I just can't help but wonder if somehow I'm just failing because it simply doesn't make sense that an entire section of a talent would simply not do anything and nobody has noticed.
Thanks!

OB in FP should give you (20 + 10)*1.1 RP = 33 RP

OB in UP should give (20 + 10) * 1.04 = 31.2 RP, and every 5th OB you'll get 32 RP

I think it's a display bug? I definitely notice this whenever I go UP and end up with 31 RP after OB (not enough to FS, QQ)

This makes sense and it's how it should work...but it's not. We don't get any addition RP from Chill of the Grave. So:

OB in FP give you (20) * 1.1 + 10 RP = 32 RP

OB in UP should give (20) * 1.04 + 10 = 30.8 RP

I know on my UI I can see Chill of the Grave's effects fairly clearly when we RP jumps up another 10 RP about a quarter of a second after using one of the abilities.

It really depends on your job on the fight. For Cho'gall I swapped into a haste > crit > mastery stack because our strat has some melee switching to the fire/shadow elemental add, and mastery wasn't giving me any tangible benefit on an add that dies in under 10 seconds versus higher haste/crit for better frontloaded burst. On the boss itself, being more or less tank and spank as far as melee are concerned, secondary stats being almost all equally (worthless) meant I wasn't really sacrificing or gaining any DPS by going that route.

Even on massive AOE fights, the amount of time you're spending focusing on killing multiple adds is generally pretty low, with Maloriak and perhaps Sinestra as exceptions. If the adds die fast enough, the benefit from mastery isn't so amazing.

In 4.1 the debate of haste vs mastery may intensify more simply because - is getting more howling blasts as good as less howling blasts that hit harder? With 4 permanent runes available and howling blast being considered a spell (hence its GCD affected by haste), will haste be better even for AOE when you can almost machine gun them?

This isn't entierley correct given the situation. If you started off with all three pairs up and burned 3 OB and 3 FS which takes 9s by which time your first pair is up again (10.5 s in). You have enough RP to FS again (12 s in) At this point you only have one death rune and it's not certain if you have an action to preform or not. The example was meant to illustrate how you would be GCD capped even in the short term with very little haste without procs. You're absoutely correct in the fact that 10% haste won't GCD cap you in the long term without RE and Rime Procs.

This was intentional. I had 49 OB Hits/Crits on the haste parse and 41 Hits/Crits with 8 Misses . The key point of the post is that haste increases Obliterate frequency, which in turn increases your Frost Strikes and Howling Blasts. Just because I missed 8 doesn’t mean that I would have had 49 hits if I hadn’t missed.

I admit that it may have been higher than 41 with no hits; however, unless missing caused a pair of runes to both be up at one time it didn’t really have an effect on how often I could use Obliterate.

It’s definitely possible that I may have had a better frequency with 0% hit rate on both parses, but its also quite possible that the misses had no effect on frequency of OBs.

There are plenty of very talented people out there. The top parses all have good RNG. This is why I didn’t simply list links to the parses and say look haste is way better. Later in the post I did use the frequency and damage modifiersto do a what if scenario on my haste parse. I concluded that if I had used Mastery in the Haste parse I would have done 6.4% less damage.

It’s also pretty biased saying I had good RNG in the haste parse and ignoring all the favorable RNG I had in the mastery one. My average OB hits and Melee hits were both higher in the mastery build. Given the mastery difference you would expect a 12% increase in frost damage between the two parses. I observed a difference between 15-20%.

I’m not interested in doing just fine. Yes I had better luck on the haste parse, but I think some of my later analysis makes a strong case for haste being better than mastery on a single target.

In the grand scheme of things I do see your point. Let’s say haste is worth 1 DPS and is twice as good as mastery. A 1400 point rating swing would only result in a 700 DPS move. Nevertheless, the point of sites like this is to maximize your DPS.

I completely agree. I think most people (myself included for a while) forget the fact that Haste and Crit help your HB some too.

On Atramedes it would be just as good to get 7 howling blasts at 12 Mastery as it would to get 6 at 18 Mastery and you’d have the extra stand and nuke damage to boot.

Mastery isn’t the only way to increase your AoE damage. Crit has the advantage of affecting all your attacks including both DoTs, haste effects white attacks, obliterate and frost strike and howling blast through obliterate. Mastery only effects frost fever, frost strike and howling blast, but it is more potent per rating point. I have plenty of parses where my Frost Damage is approaching 60% of my total damage;however, I had to stack mastery in order to get it that high.

I think that the estimate of having to do 45-50% frost damage before mastery overtakes crit is sound. We may reach a point where we have so much mastery on our gear that we can't get rid of then it will be a good idea to stack more mastery. I don't think we're there at current gear levels.

Three questions about haste for frost Death Knight:
1. Did haste decrease GCD? I always thought it did, but no one mentions it here. People write things like
that obviously wrong, if GCD is affected by haste.
2. If haste decreases GCD, would not UP be less and less attractive for 2H frost while stacking haste, as GCD will be aproaching it's cap of 1 second?
3. In high haste situations (BL, Mr Cookie etc) what benefits UP will give? Just 10% autoattack speed as GCD is at cap?