If you go deep Frost you gain:

Blood of the North - Increases Blood Strike damage by 15%, 100% chance create Death Rune.
Frost Strike - Causing 60% weapon damage plus 150.
Guile of Gorefiend - Critical strike damage (Blood Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Obliterate) by 45%
Tundra Stalker - 10% more damage to targets infected with Frost Fever, increases expertise by 5.

If you go deep Unholy you gain:

Impurity - Your spells receive an additional 25% benefit from your attack power.
Reaping - 100% chance to create Death Rune.
Master of Ghouls - Summoned Ghoul as a pet
Desecration - Plague Strikes causes Desecrated Ground effect, slowed targets by 50%, increasing damage 5%.
Crypt Fever - Your diseases cause Crypt Fever, increases disease damage by 10%.
Bone Shield - Takes 40% less damage, deals 2% damage with all attacks, spells, abilities.

BotN and Reaping/Crypt Fever to me they are a wash. The extra 15% damage to BS from BotN doesn’t overtake having the bonus damage from the extra disease counter when you have Crypt Fever. The damage difference between the two is so small I would just say they are equal.

Tundra Stalker vs. Bone Shield/Desecration, you can make an argument either way. Do you want +3% more damage and +5 expertise or do you want to slow targets by 50% and take 40% less damage but do 3% less damage over all. Other things to consider is Desecrated Ground doesn’t move and you have to keep casting Bone Shield.

So it really boils down to which is better Guile of Gorefiend (+45% BS and HB crit damage) vs. Master of Ghouls (permanent pet) and Impurity (25% Attack Power bonus)

I can’t see why anyone would ever use Frost Strike vs. Death Coil even after they change the Glyph. Frost Strike is based upon weapon damage, and when you DW, your weapon damage is very low compared to a 2h weapons and it doesn’t scale very well. However Death Coil scales very well as you gain more Attack Power and seem to do a lot more damage.

In addition, I know Death Coil falls under the Spell Hit category while I believe Frost Strike since it relies on weapon damage falls under the melee hit category. If this is the case, it makes even more sense why you would always use Death Coil over Frost Strike.

Frost Strike is a special ability, and deals yellow damage. The hit cap for specials is at 9% for both DW and single weapons, is it not? I was under the impression that the inflated miss-rate for DW was only for white damage. If it is in fact 9% as opposed to 28%, then Frost Strike will be hit-capped more quickly than Death Coil. Also worth considering is that, due to Killing Machine procs, Frost Strike will have an inflated crit rate compared to Death Coil.

Also take into consideration the fact that they are apparently removing the CD on Howling Blast, which already accounts for a large portion of the deep Frost build (GoG and TS). The Howling Blast CD information is up on MMO-Champion at the moment:

Patch 3.0.8 - PTR Build 9386

Yes, Frost Strike's hit required to cap is 9%. Death Coil's is 17%. (-3 with a SP, -3 if you take Virulence).

Frost Strike hits harder than Death Coil even with a 1 hander unless you have 5/5 Impurity and somewhere just over 4750 AP. (Morbidity assumed)

You seem to be forgetting that Frost Strike benefits from Glacier Rot and Black Ice. It also benefits from GoG and Merciless combat(Neither of which I factored into my comparison of FS vs. DC to decide which hit harder). Death Coil gets none of that. It also costs 8 more RP.

All the DW builds (All the good ones discussed anyway) include HB. 'Deep Frost' is anything past HB. This doesn't really have much impact on the Deep Frost vs. Deep Unholy argument. It does however have a substantial impact on the 'Am I aroused by patch changes?' argument.

With a 32/39 Rime Spec, is it better off to macro HB to cancel the Rime proc to keep the rotation safe, or rather to just use the Rime proc and cast IT with the extra rune (and leave the UH rune unless PS needs to be used to put up disease?), or perhaps use OB as I've seen suggested before... I've seen advocates for both ways, was just wondering what the high DPSers are doing?

I'd assume the latter is better for DPS but harder to manage, what have you guys found?

Please read recent posts before your post. HB will have no cooldown, making rime procs fantastic.

For right now, though, if you're dealing with an otherwise tight rotation many people are macroing a cancel of Freezing Fog into their HB.

Well I ran some tests over 4 min with each weapon setup, my F/F is actually worst as I MH Hailstorm and OH the Wyrmrest 120 dps sword. S/F was the Titansteel Bonecrusher MH, Hailstorm OH.

Amazingly I got similar dps numbers over 4 min. I averaged out my dps for each ability in each setup and contrary to popular believe Blood Caked Blade is better with a F/F setup. It was about 20 dps higher as F/F, which is not a ton and would be a little higher with better weapons to match my S/F setup. PS and BS I lost about 10 dps total as they are such a small portion of DW dmg.

This is pretty amazing as a F/F setup would trigger more Killing Machine procs. The only downside was the assumed belief that BCB dmg would go down. But if you think about it as S/F your hitting fewer times for more dmg, as F/F more times for less dmg each.

I am not sure I would outright say F/F is superior to S/F but it is certainly equal, you can use either setup and achieve similar dps. With the changes to HB not having a CD and being used more with Rime procs the F/F setup may actually prove to be superior due to Killing Machine.

If anyone else has a better F/F weapon setup say 2x 156 dps weapons and wants to take the time to test this further please post your results. Thanks!

Raid buffed with no procs just standing there I am around 5100 AP and that goes up alot once I start attacking and procing. SO 4750 is not hard to get, its rather low.

Yeah I know that the new update will mean HB has no cooldown, and I read through the previous posts but couldn't find a definite answer between the two options. Cheers.

Weapon damage includes your AP applied to your weapon. Its the number found in your "weapon damage range" on your character sheet, not just the average hit of the weapon itself.

You've forgotten the 10% Tundra Stalker, but that affects both DC and FS.
Does Death Coil not have a 200% damage modifier for critical strikes?

And are damage modifiers additive or multiplicative?

If multiplicative:

390 * 1.1 (Glacier Rot) * 1.3 (Black Ice) * 1.12 (Merc. Combat) * 1.1 (Tundra Stalker)
390 * 1.76 = 687

Crit with GOG:
624.62 * 2 * 1.45 = 1992

That is closer to the numbers I've been seeing with my Frost Strikes, but still lower. The reason for this is explained by Zaelen, above. I should have known this from playing with Hammer of the Righteous with my Paladin. Note that there is an additional 5% damage because of Razorice if you are using it.

I've been very curious as to whether fast/fast or slow/fast is better and done a small amount of testing myself, but not found any real answers. The problem is I haven't had a whole lot to test with. My only real option for a fast sword is the Fang of Truth from Wyrmrest rep. I was able to get a Widow's Fury from Naxx25 recently though so I will have to do some tests with that.

My normal setup has been Titansteel Bonecrusher/Grasscutter which averages 2500 dps on dummies

Using Fang of Truth/Grasscutter in a short test gave about 2400, but also went as high as 3100 early on w/ gargoyle out

Using Widow's Fury/Grasscutter seemed to average about 2500

Ultimately I think I just need to do longer tests. Generally I use Gargoyle ASAP and then go until it's off cooldown, so about 3 minutes. The numbers go up and down a lot though. Particularly with a fast/fast setup, the damage seems to spike high and then fall slowly, whereas slow/fast seemed to start a little lower, fall a little faster, but remain very consistent.

Ah okay I knew I was missing something. I recalculated my numbers and I came up with this:

Frost Strike 861.02 * 2 * 1.45 = 2496.96
Death Coil - 940.70 * 2 * 1.00 = 1881.40

Now that makes more sense. I was thinking about how Frost Strike hit this hard and cost less than DC, so I threw together a rotation with FS and its lower cost, it was very interesting.

Talent Build 0/44/27

IT: 10(Base) + 10(Glyph) + 5(CotG) = 25RP
HB: 15(Base) + 5(CotG) = 20RP

Start with - 2F - 2U - 2B - 0RP

Combat Begins
IT - (1F)---(0s)(+25 RP Total:25)reset @ 10
PS - (1U)---(1s)(+10 RP Total:35)reset @ 11
FS - (32 RP)(2s)(-32 RP Total:03)
HB - (1U/1F)(3s)(+20 RP Total:23)reset @ 12
BS - (1B)---(4s)(+10 RP Total:33)reset @ 13 ** 1 Death Rune **
FS - (32 RP)(5s)(-32 RP Total:01)
BS - (1B)---(6s)(+10 RP Total:11)reset @ 14 ** 1 Death Rune **
7s - 9s - Auto Swing

--- 10 sec Rune Reset
IT - (1F)-----(10s)(+25 RP Total:36)
FS - (32 RP)--(11s)(-32 RP Total:04)
HB - (1U/1F)--(12s)(+20 RP Total:24)
HB - (1U/1D)--(13s)(+20 RP Total:44)
FS - (32 RP)--(14s)(-32 RP Total:12)
IT - (1D)-----(15s)(+25 RP Total:37)
FS - (32 RP)--(16s)(-32 RP Total:05)
^^^ (Blood Plague & Frost Fever Refresh - Ends @ 18sec )
17s - 19s - Auto Swing

I came up with
IT x3
PS x1
FS x5
HB x3

If all the changes went live, especially Howling Blast having its cooldown removed, we could possibly cast at most an extra HB x3 if Rime procs ever IT cast giving us a total of HB x6 (best case scenario)


Then I would use these Glyph's
Major Glyph
Glyph of Icy Touch - Your Icy Touch generates 10 additional runic power. (Old - Also reduced damage of Icy Touch by 10%)

Glyph of Frost Strike - Reduces the cost of your Frost Strike by 8. (Old - Your Frost Strikes have a 10% chance to Freeze the target for 8 sec.)

Glyph of the Ghoul - Your Ghoul receives an additional 40% of your Strength and 40% of your Stamina. (Old - Your Ghoul receives an additional 20% of your Strength.

Minor
Glyph of Raise Dead - Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent. (Old - Your Ghoul receives an additional 20% of your Strength)

Glyph of Horn of Winter - Increases the duration of your Horn of Winter ability by 1 min. (Old - Horn of Winter costs 10 less runic power.)

Glyph of Raise Dead - You generate 20 runic power whenever you summon a ghoul.

That matches up more with what I've seen this morning.

Using Frost Strike instead of Death Coil in a deep frost build yields a couple hundred higher DPS.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft



One interesting thing I've noticed is that dropping my hit from 600 to 300 has actually increased by damage due to the extra crit and Ap I gain. This surprised me since most of our damage is coming from auto attacks...

If most of your damage comes from autohits, you're doing something really wrong. On my last Patchwerk kill (see above for report) I had 30% of my total damage coming from autohits, Blood-Caked Strike and Necrosis.

There still isn't a conclusive "best" DW build. Still lots of good discussion about optimal builds and rotations.

lvl80 is probably the best time to start using DW.

For starter weapons, the Wrymrest honored [Fang of Truth] and Ebon Knights revered [Reaper of Dark Souls] are very easy to obtain DW starter weapons. By the time I finished Dragonblight and about 3/4 of Icecrown, I had the required faction for both without doing dailies or championing.

Personally I'm using two Fangs as I find the fast/fast combo to perform better with my 32/39 build.

I just found this WWS link in the Frost-DPS Thread:

Wow Web Stats

I tried to read the whole thread here but didnt find any information about deep Unholy DW builts like this.
I can´t realy get a clue how this is working and how this guy does this massive DPS.

I hops someone here can give me some hints

I think you might have your rune cooldown timing wrong. For example, you have yourself leading off with a FS at the 0.0 mark, and correctly noting that this rune will be available for use a second time at the 10.0 point (10 second gap). However, as we move through your progression, your timing slips. So, for example, when you use a HB at the 3.0 mark, you note incorrectly that these runes will reset at the 12.0 mark - 9 seconds later. By the time we reach the BS at the end of your first rotation (the 6.0 mark), you have a death rune coming back at the 14.0 mark - 8 seconds later.

Not sure if you want to review in light of that - maybe all that does is push everything back a few seconds. Just wanted to point out that your rotation, as described, doesn't seem to work.

Also - since this is intended to start combat, is there any reason not to blood tap and go in with 2F 2U 1B 1D?

Final note: I would suggest the Pestilience Glyph over the Raise Dead Glyph. Saving reagents is nice on the pocketbook, but not a helpful DPS tool. Increasing the radius of Pestilience is very useful, especially since I assume that in multi-target fights, you'd want to use your blood rune on a Pestilience over a Blood Strike - both come back as Death Runes, and you massively increase your Howling Blast damage by having all area targets infected with Frost Fever.

Could you link your 32/39 build? I'm unsure as to if it's 32 blood 39 frost, or 32 frost 39 unholy, lol. And is Grasscutter any good compared to Fang of Truth?

You clearly have not read any of the last 3-4 pages. Please go do that.

I'm curious, by not having Subversion in your builds are any of you experiencing any threat issues? I would imagine that getting a string of HB crits could cause some serious problems.

Soo.... MMO-Champion just posted that the Howling Blast cooldown was removed. Is it just me, or does this make DW even more impressive, especially in deep frost.

You can't reliably 'string HB'. You have to keep Frost Fever up so you're burning a frost rune ever, or every other rotation and Rime procs are not overly common. The best you could do is two in a row, or 3 with Rime.

Either way, you're quite a bit late on the breaking news, read back or check the Upcoming DK changes thread for discussion on HB cooldown removal.

Threat, right now, is not a large issue. With the whole re-work of how tanks generate threat and the ease of content there are very few threat sensitive fights. Exceptions possibly are Malygos if you're in a few sparks, or maybe Thadius.