Don't put words in my mouth, read again. Even 7/31/3 Epidemic DOES more dps than 5/31/5, that what I was saying to you, so that spec is not a waste. 7/31/3 Virulence is the best build around, but it requires optimal play. Also, I'm not taking Masterfrost in consideration atm.

It isn't more DPS. Even your simulation data demonstrates less than 0.5% difference. That may be statistically significant (depending on your iteration count) but it isn't functionally significant. Regardless, I don't believe that any human can play the IBT build to the precision that the simulation program can. The IBT build is predicated on using BT immediately when it comes off CD, but there are situations where is comes off CD and it isn't advisable to use it or extenuating circumstances of the fight make it not optimal.

Just how much will the two different builds tailor to Masterfrost vs a Traditional priority?

So let me summarize, you don't BELIEVE anyone can play 7/31/3 properly and you are basing your theories on assumptions and not even personal experience or numbers. Following your logic, 100 or 200 more dps isn't an improvement and Masterfrost shouldn't even be mentioned, because you need to play the Imp Blood Tap spec with even an harder priority than the normal one, impossible for a human being. This argument got already clarified and discussed a page ago, you can find your answers there.

Why do you believe reaction time is not a factor in the simulator? The simulator only reacts to events as fast as you tell it, so if it takes you 3 seconds to recognize that you procced Killing Machine, etc., we support setting that. There are reasons why we have expressions using things like if=buff.killing_machine.react and also why sometimes the sim will use a KM on something other than Obliterates, as that's what you do in-game when you didn't/couldn't react to it in time.

If you truly have a worse reaction time than the default in the sim (half a second base, with some randomness), then increase it, run the sims again, and compare which still comes out best for you, as that's the purpose of the simulator.

As far as using IBT in actual gameplay, since you usually use IBT after you've Oblit'd all of your runes away, you can just macro it into FS and it'll give you 6-8 seconds off a rune routinely (at least it does for me).

While a Sim can prove what the best spec is for a computer, you have to figure out how to translate it to real play without standing in the fire.

I'm not basing my opinion exclusively on the simulator, what spec do you think I'm playing? If I wasn't so sure of its potential, I wouldn't have brought the argument, it's not my fault if no one actually did it and there's still confusion about what spec you should play and why. I'm not stating everyone should play 7/31/3 Virulence, because all the other specs are viable, but you should know that's the best one if you actually play decently well. "I don't believe that any human can play the IBT build to the precision that the simulation program can" True and false. Sure, no one can be as accurate as a machine, but that affects everything, not just Blood Tap usage. If you really cared about reading the previous page, you will know that the average time between every Blood Tap in the simulator is almost 34 sec, so with ~4 sec delay you still gaining 200 dps over the usual 5/31/5 spec and it can be more than that. Someone actually showed that even with constant ~10 sec delay you will still deal on par dps with the counterpart spec, but it's not going to happen even 1 time with the luckiest rng ever. Logs don't really help in this matter, because ~200 dps are hard to analyze, because rng has much more impact, so just try it by yourself and if you are comfortable with, keep on using it. If not, go back to your old spec, but don't spread misinformation by stating no one can play it, because it's surely not true.

Since the time between tendons is less then 2 minutes, wouldn't the skull pull ahead since it should be up for every tendon?

Yes, I was just looking over KIN's kill video and they have around 1:30 intervals between burn phases on a tendon or 2:30 intervals if they switch to a new tendon, which makes the PvP trinket unfeasible since it won't get full uptime.

Likewise for FoA, it won't be up in time to get full benefit.

Has anyone run a SimC for 2H frost with Gurth? I'm simply curious how it performs since as frost it would have a very high % of attacks to proc from since Melee + OB + FS makes up for ~80% of damage as 2H frost. I looked at SimC listing for raid T13 H and didn't even see it on the list. Heroics have shoehorned me into having a blood and frost spec for H10 progression. I don't have a 2nd H Morchok Axe yet so I'm still trying to get by with a Gurth and wanted to see if it was even 95% competitive with DW at the top end.