Ok, as I am faced with the ever present trinket question myself, I did some calculations. Long story short, Apparatus of Khaz'goroth, Essence of the Eternal Flame, and License to Slay all seem to have about the same amount of average strength, and about the same amount of secondary stats. My calculations for this were as follows:

Apparatus has 383 strength and 2504 haste on a 2 min cd for 15 sec. 2504 is 313 static haste. That is to say 2504/8 (15 secs of 2 min is 1/8 uptime). I don't count the need to wait for procs because we are Frost DKs...crits aren't really a problem...

Essence of the Eternal Flame has 383 Mastery with 1277 strength on use. 1277 strength for 15 secs every 1 min equals 383 average strength assuming you always macro it with your PoF (1277*1.2 then divided by 4 as it is active 1/4 of it's cd).

License to Slay has 321 hit and, essentially, 380 strength.

I'm not considering DMC:H because I don't have it and am not paying for it as I don't see it being worth the gold considering the trinkets I already have.

This means that all trinkets have an effective 380-383 strength and that Essence of the Eternal Flame has the most secondary stats.

Obviously, there is a rather large difference between on use and static trinkets. I'm a big fan of macros and am fairly aware, so I like on use as they give me more flexibility. I find the burst dps useful for fights such as Rhyolith (when hard turns are needed) and for lining up with other cds such as hero. Of course, the haste from Apparatus is almost useless during hero and the Essence, if it is about to come off cd when the boss dies/raid wipes, suffers large losses as well. Still, overall, I find myself attracted to these two if, for no other reason, that I simply don't need the hit from the License, and I can't image many other fairly well geared dual-wielders do either.

I'm pretty sure you can't calculate PoF for just one trinket, as you're assuming that you'd only use Pillar is using that one trinket. In reality if you'd then also have to give the passive strength trinkets the benefits of Pillar, so Apparatus would be ((383*1.20)/3)+383 or 536 strength, License would be ((380*1.20)/3)+380 or 532 strength. The sad fact is that the Essence has a lower amount of strength.


Also, Apparatus of Khaz'Goroth now gives 504 per stack of Titanic Power, so it's not actually behind on the secondary stat budget.

This was gone over extensively in the last thread, but yes, when looking at how PoF syncs with EEF, you need to account for the fact that, on average, a trinket with either static strength, or a strength proc uncorrelated with PoF, will benefit from 33% of the 20% str bonus of PoF, so 6-7%. This means that the PoF "bonus" for EEF works out to about 12-13%, not 20%.

Regardless, it doesn't do much to change the conclusion that LTS, EEF, and N App., and N VOA, are all relatively close. Ultimately, LTS is the better trinket (but not by a lot). However the current tier's itemization is such that you can find yourself in a situation where, even after reforging away all the hit on your gear, the hit on LTS puts you past the yellow cap (and often the spell cap too). In this case, other trinkets, like EEF, can pull ahead. Then there is the fact that on-use stats can arguably be better than static stats, etc etc.

I really feel like there has been too much discussion regarding the relative value of trinkets. Everything that needs to be said about them, from their effective stat weights, to how to account to PoF syncing with EEF, to how to appropriately weight stats like expertise and hit, has all been said, and often re-said. It is very simple to just plug a trinket into a gear configuration, reforge, see what happens to the stats, add the effective value of the proc, and rank things accordingly. And if people are too lazy to do that, here is the rough answer:

H HoR >= H VOA > H App >
LTS >= N VOA >= N App >= EEF

Where the difference between ">=" is generally small and will depend on whether or not trinkets with +hit or +exp have any "wasted" stats. Realistically the difference between some of these trinkets, like all of them on the second line, is smaller than the impact of personal variation / error in stat weights, and also small compared to the proc uptime variation you'll see as a function of fight duration & luck.

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Think the math for Apparatus should be rather ( (383*1.2*20) + (383*40) ) / 60 = 409. Also, in raid environment passive STR trinket values is probably bigger, because they always take full benefit from Rune of FC, while for the proc trinkets it's quite random.

This should probably be changed. Its much less hurtful to drop a point from Butchery/Epidemic (end up with 2/3), as the fights Chillblains is good for (H Beth/Rhyo), you should just sit in FP if you are designated to AoE. Maybe not for H Rhyo if you just randomly slow the slimes and tunnel legs (which should be left to other classes anyways). Its easy to solo a lane on H beth just sitting in FP for example.

If you're "tanking" broodlings on Beth while handling a spiderling spawn, unholy presence's run speed is much more important.

I solo an entire spawn in 25-man without difficulty using unholy presence. Frost presence's extra damage is nice for the sustained AOE, but after the spiderlings are all dead you will have little to no time to DPS anything else before a new wave of spiderlings spawns, which you will need to run to in order to begin DPSing. Any minute gain you see from frost presence is lost from the extra time it takes to run from point to point. Also if you get Fixate, you are at a disadvantage unless you presence swap into UHP anyway.

For Rhyolith, Fragments live for a short enough period of time for frost presence to not provide a significant enough advantage here either. There is also sufficient running around catching bloods involved for runspeed to also be the biggest DPS increase here as well.

I haven't experienced any scenarios where frost presence has provided me much if any benefit thus far in this expansion, compared to unholy presence. The few places where you are sustaining AOE for a long period also happen to be places where you need to be constantly moving or running from fires or orbs or whatever.

On side note to this. It is far more beneficial to be running as Unholy during Lord Rhyolith even being slightly below hit cap from a frost setup. I swap a couple of items to bump up the hit. Unholy contributes so much more damage than frost can put out if you are on leg duty.

A log of the comparison although not a flawless try by any means.
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

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