I love how this entire thread is totally based on hard statistics garnered through actual logs and simulations... oh wait...

Over every single 2h frost dk's cycle till the end of time you will average 2.25 runes. However that doesn't change the fact that in a particular snapshot of time, say 1 fight, you may get an over abundance of runes or a drought of runes.

The theoretical dps gain you get by holding onto your resources is easily wiped out by the fact you could potentially go into a rune drought thus leading to less frost strikes and overall less runes generated.

There is a reason that sims have such a GIANT variation in dps distributions. It's called RNG and it's something you need to account for.

The thread is based off logic, with minor numbers and math where needed.
And whether you get twice the runes you get on average, or half the runes, it's still logically a damage increase. RNG exists in our rotation, but doesn't change the fact that obliterate hits harder than frost strike, and it certainly does not change the fact that killing machine is better used on obliterate than on frost strike.
The entire first section on the OP is all about not wasting resources, and notes to adjust for RNG. Assuming you follow that, no rng in the world will stop waiting at the proper times to be a damage increase.

I think the entirety of this thread can be summed up as follows (no offense intended, just for clarity's sake):

Get a swing timer addon.
Hold off for a few milliseconds at the end of a white swing and NOT spam frost strike.
Game KM procs as much as possible on Oblits in that manner.
Otherwise just follow the same priority list in the main frost thread (ie. not capping runes or runic power)

If i missed something, please expand upon it.

I'm tracking Swing Timer with Weak Auras and it's actually more than "hold off a few milliseconds" to see if KM occurs or not. It's actually like 0,5 second (I waited "few milliseconds" after the swing occurred, I saw no KM procced, I OBed and KM procced).

simc will tell you if you're wasting runes in the resources section of the report. Example:

Resource Gains	Type	Count	Total	Average	Overflow
rune_regen_all	None	5529.23	152.27	0.03	2.97	1.92%
rune_regen_unholy	None	1841.79	50.80	0.03	0.94	1.81%
rune_regen_blood	None	1856.48	50.38	0.03	1.37	2.64%
rune_regen_frost	None	1830.95	51.09	0.03	0.67	1.29%

I'm wasting 0.94 unholy runes, 1.37 blood (death as frost) runes, 0.67 frost runes. Check that table as you modify the priority to see what's going on.

As for (Blood=>1.8|Frost>=1.8|Unholy>=1.8), it doesn't work that way. You probably want (Blood=1&Blood.cooldown_remains<=2)|(Frost...)|...

Thanks for the help! Looking at the overflow is helping me to nail down more of where the lost damage is going, and most, if not all, seems to be going to runes. Despite having 60 seconds of free GCDs through the sim, I can't convince it to spend runic below 40 for the entire run, which I'm convinced is helping to lead to the over-capping, not having GCDs when you need them.
However, the line
actions+=/obliterate,if=(Blood=1&Blood.cooldown_remains<=2|Frost=1&Frost.cooldown_remains<=2|Un holy=1&Unholy.cooldown_remains<=2)
produces the same results as the line
actions+=/obliterate,if=(Blood=1|Frost=1|Unholy=1), so I'm not convinced that's the correct way to tell them sim to spend runes at 90% capped. Still looking for ideas about fixing the overflow problem, because I've optimized the sim to 16% extra crit rate on obliterates, which is amazing, if we can fix overflow.

Here is my most accurate sim at this time:



It has a 57% crit rate on obliterate, and a 22% crit rate on frost strike, but wastes 8.5% of runic from obliterates and 6% overall rune regen (11% from blood runes), however it doesn't waste RE procs at all!
I'll keep mulling over it, but help would be appreciated.

I have notice a significant dps gain by always saving 1 pair of runes, and using them exactly right when swing timer would have proc killing machine. After enough practice if KM have proc, it would consume KM otherwise it would continue and nothing else would change.

In between I weaves in frost strikes and oblit to make sure not cap on any of the resources, and I agree with you logically speaking there should be not dps loss assuming that you don't have crazy amount of haste (like during BL) so that you don't cap runes. You should have many available gcd that delaying 2x runes would not be dps loss at all as you will be able to spend them and "lost resources" after swing timer pass

I have tried to sim this kind of behavior, without any luck. Just going to have to accept its the limitation of the software. Its a priority based simulator that you can't sim for when this new rotation is no longer priority based in the traditional sense

As you said, it's 40% of a rune vs. 45% of a rune, so the control you get from BT has to be able to worth that 5% of a rune every single frost strike. Why do most people say that RE is better? The sim says it is. Pure and simple, simcraft compares both and says that you get more damage from RE than BT. Now, this cleary does not mean it is actually better, but it is a leg to stand on.

Let's look at the facts:

Benefits from RE:
12.5% more runes than BT

Benefits from BT:
Allows you to obliterate with KM procced without waiting.
Allows you to FS even with all runes at 1
Makes it less likely to have 2 unholy and no frost, or vice versa.
Gives you more runes during burst phases and times with lots of procs up.

Sadly, it's very very difficult to use math in this situation, as the value of blood tap is hard to numerically determine.
I'll look into improving the sim for blood tap's use, but it's mostly personal preference, as any existing difference between the two is very small.

Feel free to use my action list as a starting point. There are many differences between it and the default, each tested to show an improvement (after adjusting the default to always use .react with KM). Specifically for Blood Tap, it keeps Blood Charge stacks as high as possible without overflowing, then uses them to capitalize on KM procs and Soul Reaper. With the default BiS profile's gear, sims show (50k iterations each):

116,259 dps w/ BT (64.6% KM on OB, 28.2 sec waiting, 66 Blood Taps)
116,136 dps w/ RE (46.2% KM on OB, 25.9 sec waiting, 76.8 Runic Empowerments)
113,183 dps w/ RC (47.2% KM on OB, 38.5 sec waiting)



Edit: Also spending BT on Soul Reaper is a benefit. I updated everything above accordingly.

I don't mean to sidetrack the conversation, but on the topic of wasting resources, I wanted to get some various opinions on using Soul Reaper at 35%.

Without KM, Soul Reaper hits harder than OB, so (and perhaps I could factor in the "swing timing" Dossou talked about) I should hit SR and waste a potential KM OB (which I may spend on an FS depending on Runes and RP that I have).

I am loathe to do this (and indeed I sometimes skip out on SR in favor of waiting) but the theory tells me that I shouldn't waste a SR because of the potential to hit harder and hope for a T5 proc on a FS and then get a KM for OB. I have hit SR many times then got a KM proc with no D or F rune to use and no proc on RE.

If we truly should maximize OB crits, perhaps it's better to ignore SR unless I necessarily have an extra F or D rune up (so FU and D or some combination of that) as well as enough to OB immediately after with a KM.

EDIT: I have not done any raiding thus far on my Death Knight and am woefully undergeared. Perhaps with an increase in gear, SR does outperform a KM Ob even without a crit on the SR (as well as being able to get in more SRs than I have thus far on heroic bosses versus raid bosses; however on Sha last night, I was doing considerably less damage with SRs than with OBs but I waited on OBs so perhaps I had a net loss I am not sure).

I'm attempting to restart the discussion in this thread, and would appreciate any feedback to anything in it.

In regards to the waiting vesus not waiting argument, I'm seeing solid arguments for both sides at the moment, and am no longer convinced it's a definitive gain, especially considering the lack of free GCDs for 2hand frost. My BiS default sim profile currently has 2hand waiting 5.7% of the time, and DW waiting 3.8% of the time, which makes it much harder to justify waiting. I'll continue doing research, and hopefully getting feedback, and write an updated section when I have enough information on the subject.

As for the rest of the thread, I'm happy with it in it's current state, but please keep in mind that most of the tips and tactics have a very small testing pool giving me any data on the validity of said ideas. If you find any particular idea to be helpful, or hurtful, to your personal performance, that feedback will greatly help me evaluate the value of keeping the section in this thread.

I intend to maintain this thread as long as I continue to frost, and as long as the information is useful to the community.


Some threads which have been picking up the discussion on other sites about the same topic ~

MMOchamp thread provided by Jessamy
Euliat's post and a discussion on battle.net
Euliat's source code for an alternative sim that incorporates waiting
Euliat's conclusion for GCD usage numbers



Also, while this isn't the perfect place for it, I'm wondering if anyone is considering the admittedly way to early to tell changes to unholy on the patch notes for 5.2

Unholy
Reaping now also applies to Icy Touch. (useless single target, with PS change, pretty much useless unless you want to force a frost into death and you're out of melee range)
Summon Gargoyle no longer costs Runic Power. (saves 60 runic every 3 minutes, 60 runic is worth about 2 death coils, or about 122k, plus the "free" rune from RE/BT/RC, which is worth about 74k, or 200k total/180 seconds is 1.1k dps, also makes bursting easier, no need t bank runic)
Gargoyle Strike now deals Shadow and Nature damage (was Nature only)(now benefits from mastery, I'm assuming, the BiS unholy sim has 47% mastery, and increasing gargoyles 575k to 862k, a 287k bonus every 3 minutes, which is great burst, and also 1.6k dps.)
Ebon Plaguebringer now causes Plague Strike to inflict Frost Fever, in addition to its other effects. (nice for target swaps, useless single target as FeS/outbreak should keep up diseases fine, maybe makes PL/PS worth using once per minute?)

Sims have unholy about 8k behind, single target BiS, atm, with these changes, I see unholy being 2.7k up, but still about 4-5k behind frost.