whatthecrap

@Daskovacs

The BS glyph is useless in PvE. Skipping Unbreakable Armor also means that you're giving up a good DPS CD.

While the overall spec is something that I've been looking forward to testing myself, once my characters get to the PTR, mine has 2/3 Rime with Unbreakable Armor. And obviously the Obliterate Glyph.

Rotation would be:

IT>PS>OB>BS>BS>DUMP -> OB>OB>OB>DUMP
With FS on KM Procs and HB on Rime Procs.


@Kuuran

While your Build is certainly interesting, and could be fun, I personally think that it would fall behind in straight DPS output. It's true that a Heroism with Hysteria and UA would yield incredible DPS. However, your spec would be revolving around a 3 minute and a 2 minute CD. Just doesn't seem justifiable to me. I may be wrong. Post some numbers on these forums so we can get an idea of what your build's capable of.

 

Daskovacs

Why is that? Icy Touch is a snare.

Edit - I should also add I'm leaning more towards the OB glyph considering the new sigil. I'm just trying to get a handle on BS and if its worth it considering the buff.

 

• Darkside

IT is not a snare, it is an attack speed reducer. Howver, FFB is a snare so having at least one FFB specced mage in the raid will allow you to take full benefit of the BS glyph.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Daskovacs

Really? I rerolled from a mage and was under the assumption that IT was a snare when I spec'd into ToW. Hmmm I'm guessing you need to spec into Chilblains...

 

whatthecrap

The only issue with that assumption is that there will not always be a FFB Mage in every group you run. Granted, the chances of that are slim, but it's still possible. Glyphs that have a 100% chance of being useful to a build are the ones I personally consider useful.

 

• Darkside

IT affects ToW because ToW triggers any time the target is snared OR slowed.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Vinclass

If I'm reading what you guys are saying, then FFB is considered a snare even if a mob is snare immune. Is this true? I operated under the assumption the HS glyph is a PvP glyph as most boss mobs are immune to snares, althought TotW is able to take advantage of the attack/cast speed slows that many classes offer.

Also, I saw elsewhere someone came up with a build like this 0/45/26 I want to try out: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=10026

The questions I'd need to answer are, will the point in master of ghouls outweigh the loss of tundra stalker?
Is it worth dropping a point in Impurity to grab Unholy Blight, or will FS still be a better source of damage even without TS?

I imagine you could run this as a dual disease build and a base rotation of:
IT PS OB BS BS Dump
OB OB IT IT Dump

I'm not sure if there should be so much in the way of Obliterate, because the build lacks Subversion and Rime, substantially reducing the damage of OB. If using UH Presence, I imagine the OB's would be better as IT/PS.

 

• Darkside

This was true pre-3.1 when the BS glyph affected both BS and HS, so unless they have changed the code while we were not looking (possible, but unlikely) FFB will still trigger the 20% damage increase.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Tarquin

Regarding the 0/40/29+2 DW/death coil build posted in the testing thread: is Killing Machine really a worthwhile investment of talent points? You'd pretty much only be using it on IT, and that probably not particularly often. Dropping that could pick up Merciless Combat, and then I suppose you could either stick with 3/5 KM or put the points in Endless Winter or something.

"Aggro" (n): in the Ancient Lordaeranian, a battle cry roughly translating to "Victory and death!"

 

whatthecrap

@Tarquin

It's true that KM serves little to no purpose in that build. But as for the purpose of the thread, it's working thus far.

I made the thread partly to make comparing easier, but also to consolidate all the builds into one thread. As such, I copied spec directly, without deviation. I didn't spend much time looking at them to be honest, I had planned on doing that later as I didn't expect the thread to garner much attention right away.

Personally I would have gone with this. I will probably end up changing that build to the one I just linked or to any other if anyone would like to suggest an alternative.

 

Aezoc

I have a bad habit of forgetting to swap out of my PvP spec at the start of a raid, and my experience has been that chillblains triggers an immune message on any raid mob worth caring about, rather than applying the debuff but not snaring (which I believe is what happens with mages).

 

Tarquin

Any reports on if Chill of the Grave/Dirge are doubling up on RP with DW, the way Howling Blast w/ CotG generates ludicrous amounts of RP on multiple targets?

"Aggro" (n): in the Ancient Lordaeranian, a battle cry roughly translating to "Victory and death!"

 

Kuuran

@Bungie

Well I'm not sure what the rotation would be exactly, but it would come close to:

IT PS BS OB BS Dump

OB OB BS Pest Dump
OB OB OB Dump

I'm not sure how many OBs you'd squeeze in before you needed to refresh diseases, but obviously the goal is to maximize and spam OB like an Unholy build spams SS-- when diseases are about to fall, BS and Pest, or if you can tap, Pest and OB.

 

Edimasta

That is also what I am asking myself... I don't think this build will work out, because Blizzard is not intending to let us play something else than deep Frost!

I would prefer something like 10/53/8 or 15/53/3 using PS-IT-BS-BS-OB-FS, standard rotation going on to as many OBs and FS as possible!

But unfortunately still not able to join the PTR because I use a B.net acc -.-

Anyone else had luck?

 

Sakuratei

I don't get why people are still trying to wedge in Unholy as the subspec. The whole idea of the Frost tree is generating as much RP as possible to churn out as many Frost Strikes as possible, because they're by far the biggest source of damage for a 2H Frost build.

With Threat of Thassarian, our DW strikes will be closer to 2H strikes, as well as a buff to Blood Strike. Also, with Threat of Thassarian, Obliterate will probably be stronger than Howling Blast considering the insane crit rate you can get for it with Rime and Subversion.

DW Frost is focused on Strikes just like 2H frost now, unlike before where the strikes were weak. The reason why Blood Caked Blade and Necrosis were viewed as the better subspec was because they didn't rely on strikes at all, whether they were a huge increase over blood subspec back then, I don't know. I don't think it will be now, though.

 

Yubble

I'm afraid I strongly disagree. A buffed BS isn't going to overtake 20% damage to each white hit along with BCB. Not to mention the need for increased disease time, ESPECIALLY if you want to spam BS...

 

Sakuratei

If the aim is to spam Blood Strike (Or obliterate for that matter) I think the 14% crit from Subverison and Dark Conviction would be quite juicy.

As I mentioned before, Threat of Thassarian brings DW back towards being focused around strikes, the question is the relation in strength between the new strikes and white attacks, which part will be more worth buffing up.

 

VonHellsing

This is along the lines of how I was thinking as well. I was thinking 10/54/7 with a rotation as follows:

PS IT BS BS OB Dump
OB OB OB Dump
Pest BS OB OB OB Dump

You could then repeat lines 2 & 3 for the bulk of the rotation.

 

Yubble

Yes I suppose. I doubt it's even a question, though, as white hits have ALWAYS been the top damage, by a good margin, in any DW setup for any DW class. And again, if you don't take at least 7 pts in unholy, your diseases are gooing to fall off, greatly reducing your dps (especially since the very recent update to frost fever and blood plague).

That would mean you get none of the lower tier blood talents that buff BS. Just something to think about.

 

Yubble

??? Where are the 8 runes in the last part of the rotation coming from?

Also... this will generate ~ 130 RP per rotation, meaning ~ 4 FS, opposed to an IT rotation that will generate enough RP for 6 or 7. I think the IT rotation will still win but... maybe not. Give it a whirl.

 

Fargom

While white hits are very strong for any DW DK, they are not top damage "by a good margin" by any means. I seem to remember them being on par with Howling blast and Icy touch in the old days, and currently, white / Deathcoil are both neck and neck for 0/17/54 DW. (My last parse had 21% DC 21% white)

I don't think the additional damage on Blood plague / Frost Fever will have much of an impact on rotation, as to my knowledge every spec aims for 100% uptime on diseases anyway.

I think we need to move past the speculation about new builds, we need to get on with testing instead of posting untested and unproven ideas.

 

◊ Kaubel

Agreed. This thread is old and no longer useful.