To bring this conversation back from the brink, there's some discussion over at Unholy about them having undervalued expertise relative to strength because of upset rotations, I was wondering how much that might apply to Frost, since a large chunk of our DPS comes from Frost Strike for which expertise does nothing. Is it worthwhile to gem/gear to cap expertise to ensure our rotations do not get botched since we end up having to cram GCDs anyway, we don't really have time to deal with attacks that fail to land.
Expertise has always been one of the best stats to get regardless of which build, this was established in Beta. First you get hit capped (8%), then Expertise capped (6.5%), then you just start stacking STR (I'm ignoring crit since with Naxx gear you should be at 30% crit without any gems).
Edit: im still in some tanking gear due to it was last night that it was decided for me to main spec dps an just OT when needed so i dont have a full set of dps gear yet.
To bring this conversation back from the brink, there's some discussion over at Unholy about them having undervalued expertise relative to strength because of upset rotations, I was wondering how much that might apply to Frost, since a large chunk of our DPS comes from Frost Strike for which expertise does nothing. Is it worthwhile to gem/gear to cap expertise to ensure our rotations do not get botched since we end up having to cram GCDs anyway, we don't really have time to deal with attacks that fail to land.
One thing that strikes me here is that even if Frost Strike isn't effected by Expertise, Obliterate is, since Obliterate and Frost Strike at least in most of my parses are both around 20% of my dps I feel expertise capping is still important as a Frost DK...
I'm running a 21/50/0 build right now as to me having Rune Tap and VotTW are more valuable then Lichborne and getting icy up sooner when running back or away from a mob... but that's my personal preference and nothing mathematical about it..
Regardless I'm pretty sure that capping expertise is important regardless of spec, though less so for Frost then other specs because of Frost Strike.
Edit: im still in some tanking gear due to it was last night that it was decided for me to main spec dps an just OT when needed so i dont have a full set of dps gear yet.
Unless I'm reading something wrong, Dark Conviction only gives crit chance, not hit. WWS seems to enjoy registering dodges and parries as a 'miss', and spell hit cap is 17% so you're going to miss your coils 8% of the time.
Looking at your WWS, you are missing for almost 8%. You need to make sure you are behind the boss at all times. With your hit and expertise levels, you should only be missing your mele attacks 2% of the time (and by misses, I mean dodges).
Quite well aware, and indeed, that chart is the reason for my inquery, since, last time I checked 2.0712 < 2.3650 implying that Strength outstrips Expertise.
¬The Original PalaTank, William Erik Petersen The Unbreakable
Tanking with a Paladin since before it was cool.
Unless I'm reading something wrong, Dark Conviction only gives crit chance, not hit. WWS seems to enjoy registering dodges and parries as a 'miss', and spell hit cap is 17% so you're going to miss your coils 8% of the time.
Looking at your WWS, you are missing for almost 8%. You need to make sure you are behind the boss at all times. With your hit and expertise levels, you should only be missing your mele attacks 2% of the time (and by misses, I mean dodges).
Spell hit is calculated at a different rate than melee hit (20something compared to 30something per % i believe) but even so at melee special hit cap you're below spell hit cap. Seeing as how this would only effect IT (and howling blast if its actually procing and you're willing to use a gcd on it) I think the importance of it as a stat past special hit cap will be less then the new expertise values so not something to really go after.
That being said I went in and looked at those WWS reports and even with extending out the parry/dodge/immune/evade column under misses there was still 1 missed melee swing and 1 missed blood strike... The only thing I can assume is that possibly that 2handed mace might be a new thing for you and you're still at 399 weapon skill. Anything past that and I'm stumped, couldnt even find any mob debuffs that would effect the hit.
Alright, so as we all know there have been made a few changes to the glyphs and abilities in our trees, leaving us some utility points to throw around. I've played a dps roll through the three main 2h trees, and I've found that frost is second to none in terms of high dmg out put; however, what I've noticed is that with the deep frost spec, there hasn't been one set rotation that allows the DK to optimise maximum dps out put. The one rotation that I was aware of and used for the longest time was:
PS, IT, BS, BS, OB, FS --> PS, IT, OB, OB, FS - Rinse repeat.
With the new changes being made, a lot of arguements have cropped up in terms of the Dps cycle, and which presence to be in.
What I would like to know is what is the new rotation for a deep frost build to optimise max dps?
In addition to this, I would also like to know if the following spec is a viable choice for an increase in dps, with the reduction of 2 points in BotN and the rearranging of a few utility points into blood.
Well first off,as was previously stated,the best argument to get the maximum RP dump in unholy presence is if you currently have a four piece t7 bonus.I have looked through most peoples toons,who make a continual addition on this thread,and most don't have that yet.
So to answer your question,in the current state of affairs unless your in a four piece,and throwing betrayer of humanity on that boss,stick to blood presence.Secondly,the optimized cycle was discussed earlier in the thread.Take a couple pages of read out and go find out,trust me I read this thread for four solid hours.
Thirdly,the math was shown that due to the frost damage increase of cinderglacier it should be used over fallen crusader.Why is this you ask?Alright now lets pull out a napkin,cinderglacier is 20% increase of whatever frost or shadow damage ability is used next.So,say my frost strikes crit a level 80 mob for 5200 unbuffed completely.5200*.20 = 104 added so now I have a 5304.Now,remember cinderglacier allows the use of two procs',which is excellent for RP dump.
Frost Spec Alterations and Dps rotations in Question?
Alright Thanks
I wasn't to sure with all of that, I've read through this thread a few times now, but I guess I missed a few things. Thanks for helping me out, it's Greatly appreciated!!
Well first off,as was previously stated,the best argument to get the maximum RP dump in unholy presence is if you currently have a four piece t7 bonus.I have looked through most peoples toons,who make a continual addition on this thread,and most don't have that yet.
So to answer your question,in the current state of affairs unless your in a four piece,and throwing betrayer of humanity on that boss,stick to blood presence.Secondly,the optimized cycle was discussed earlier in the thread.Take a couple pages of read out and go find out,trust me I read this thread for four solid hours.
Thirdly,the math was shown that due to the frost damage increase of cinderglacier it should be used over fallen crusader.Why is this you ask?Alright now lets pull out a napkin,cinderglacier is 20% increase of whatever frost or shadow damage ability is used next.So,say my frost strikes crit a level 80 mob for 5200 unbuffed completely.5200*.20 = 104 added so now I have a 5304.Now,remember cinderglacier allows the use of two procs',which is excellent for RP dump.
That's quite incorrect; the last discussion on the matter was that a Frost DK benefits most from Fallen Crusader, then Razorice (which is considered superior if you are in a group with 1+ Frost/Frostfire mages). 30% of my strength nets me 540 AP, or about a 20% bonus to all of my damage scaling; while this isn't a flat 20% boost to two abilities, consider also that you can't control when either procs, possibly wasting a cinderglacier proc on Icy Touch, of all things. At the very least, I'd receive the same reduction in damage if Crusader procced prior to IT, but it would likely remain up through a blood strike, two obliterates, and a Frost Strike, not to mention about 4 auto attacks.
That's quite incorrect; the last discussion on the matter was that a Frost DK benefits most from Fallen Crusader, then Razorice (which is considered superior if you are in a group with 1+ Frost/Frostfire mages). 30% of my strength nets me 540 AP, or about a 20% bonus to all of my damage scaling; while this isn't a flat 20% boost to two abilities, consider also that you can't control when either procs, possibly wasting a cinderglacier proc on Icy Touch, of all things. At the very least, I'd receive the same reduction in damage if Crusader procced prior to IT, but it would likely remain up through a blood strike, two obliterates, and a Frost Strike, not to mention about 4 auto attacks.
Cinderglacier is not a good choice of an enchant.
I stand corrected,you aren't the only one who mis-reads posts .
As for the discussion regarding 4-piece/unholy presence, I acquired my bonus last week, and the bonus is a substantial bump in DPS as predicted (as long as the rotation can be maintained.) I've found that blood presence is still the presence to use.
With 4-piece, the rotation becomes IT>BS>OB>OB>FS>FS>Rime Procs; IT>OB>BS>OB>FS>FS>FS. Basically, you get 5 FSs in every 20 second rotation, and you ignore rime procs in the 2nd half of the rotation. Math/explanation follows.
The first half takes 7.5 seconds to complete if executed exactly correctly, assuming the IT is time 0. Plenty of time.
The 2nd half takes 9 seconds to complete, leaving you ready to execute your next rotation at time 10.5 due to global cooldowns. When executed correctly, this causes no pushback due to the 1.5 second rule, as noted in the DPS Compendium thread.
So far no problem.
The problem comes into play if you get a Rime proc during the 2nd half of the rotation, because if you use HB in addition to 3 FSs, you delay your next rotation by 2 seconds (the first half is no problem, as using it will be your 3rd possible dump and will not delay the runes coming up correctly.) The proc has a 15 second duration, so you will not be able to wait until after your OBs in the first half of the next cycle - that was my first thought too.
So, you run into 3 possibilities: Use Rime procs in the 2nd half and delay your rotation, skip HB in the 2nd half altogether, or use Unholy presence to capture those extra Rime procs with no delay.
Situation 1, you delay your rotation by 2 seconds to use HB. With a 15% proc rate on IT, and a delay on 50% of procs (those that happen during the 2nd half of the cycle,) in a 5 minute fight you will be delayed 3 times, for a total delay of 6 seconds, or about half a rotation. By delaying, you've gained an additional 3 HBs. My HBs have been averaging 4757 damage each (counting both hit and crit) so by delaying my cycle I could have picked up 14271 damage. By delaying the cycle, I also lose 6 seconds, or 2 OB, 1 IT, and 1 BS. So, for me I would lose (2*6369)+ 2719 + 2345 = 17802 damage. So, by using that HB and delaying my cycle, I'd lose about 3530 damage.
Situation 2 is skipping HB in the 2nd half altogether. I've already shown above that the benefit for using HB is less than the benefit of just skipping it half the time, so this is obviously better than situation 1. We still get 50% of our Rime procs, we just skip the other half. In any type of group/AOE situation, Rime procs should still always be used as HB hitting on multiple mobs will outstrip the relatively small damage loss vs. situation 1.
In Situation 3, I capture those rime procs and gain a bit of haste, but lose out on the 15% damage bonus from blood presence. Here, I gain the same 14271 damage from HB procs over 5 minutes, I lose none from cycle delay as it doesn't happen with a 1s GCD, for a net gain of 14271 damage. Using my own numbers in Blood Presence, I generate 63962 damage in one cycle, so this is 54368 in Unholy after the 15% from blood is taken away. So, for each full cycle, I lose 9594 damage, which is 143,916 over 5 minutes, for a net damage of -129,644. My swing speed is 3.08 seconds, so in 5 minutes I'll have 97 swings at an average of 2358 damage for a total of 228,817 with blood presence, so with unholy I will have 112 swings for a total of 264,096, for a net damage of 35279. I will also have 15 more swings, each of which has a 20% chance of proccing KM (40% crit and 50% chance on crit to proc,) for an extra 3 KM procs. How much damage this adds will depend on which skill it is used on, but it will not make up -94,365 damage lost vs. blood presence.
TLDR/conclusion: With 4-piece T7, Blood Presence is still the best presence for DPS, and Rime procs in the 2nd half of the rotation (when you have 3 FSs) should be skipped except during AOE/multi-mob situations.
Edit - Found an error in the Situation 3 haste section. This has been corrected and does not affect the conclusion.
As for the discussion regarding 4-piece/unholy presence, I acquired my bonus last week, and the bonus is a substantial bump in DPS as predicted (as long as the rotation can be maintained.) I've found that blood presence is still the presence to use.
With 4-piece, the rotation becomes IT>BS>OB>OB>IT>IT>Rime Procs; IT>OB>BS>OB>IT>IT>IT. Basically, you get 5 FSs in every 20 second rotation, and you ignore rime procs in the 2nd half of the rotation. Math/explanation follows.
The first half takes 7.5 seconds to complete if executed exactly correctly, assuming the IT is time 0. Plenty of time.
The 2nd half takes 9 seconds to complete, leaving you ready to execute your next rotation at time 10.5 due to global cooldowns. When executed correctly, this causes no pushback due to the 1.5 second rule, as noted in the DPS Compendium thread.
So far no problem.
The problem comes into play if you get a Rime proc during the 2nd half of the rotation, because if you use HB in addition to 3 FSs, you delay your next rotation by 2 seconds (the first half is no problem, as using it will be your 3rd possible dump and will not delay the runes coming up correctly.) The proc has a 15 second duration, so you will not be able to wait until after your OBs in the first half of the next cycle - that was my first thought too.
So, you run into 3 possibilities: Use Rime procs in the 2nd half and delay your rotation, skip HB in the 2nd half altogether, or use Unholy presence to capture those extra Rime procs with no delay.
Situation 1, you delay your rotation by 2 seconds to use HB. With a 15% proc rate on IT, and a delay on 50% of procs (those that happen during the 2nd half of the cycle,) in a 5 minute fight you will be delayed 3 times, for a total delay of 6 seconds, or about half a rotation. By delaying, you've gained an additional 3 HBs. My HBs have been averaging 4757 damage each (counting both hit and crit) so by delaying my cycle I could have picked up 14271 damage. By delaying the cycle, I also lose 6 seconds, or 2 OB, 1 IT, and 1 BS. So, for me I would lose (2*6369)+ 2719 + 2345 = 17802 damage. So, by using that HB and delaying my cycle, I'd lose about 3530 damage.
Situation 2 is skipping HB in the 2nd half altogether, I've already shown above that the benefit for using HB is less than the benefit of just skipping it half the time, so this is obviously better than situation 1. We still get 50% of our Rime procs, we just skip the other half. In any type of group/AOE situation, Rime procs should still always be used as HB hitting on multiple mobs will outstrip the relatively small damage loss vs. situation 1.
In Situation 3, I capture those rime procs and gain a bit of haste, but lose out on the 15% damage bonus from blood presence. Here, I gain the same 14271 damage from HB procs over 5 minutes, I lose none from cycle delay as it doesn't happen with a 1s GCD, for a net gain of 14271 damage. Using my own numbers in Blood Presence, I generate 63962 damage in one cycle, so this is 54368 in Unholy after the 15% from blood is taken away. So, for each full cycle, I lose 9594 damage, which is 143,916 over 5 minutes, for a net damage of -129,644. My swing speed is 3.08 seconds, so in 5 minutes I'll have 97 swings at an average of 2358 damage for a total of 228,817 with blood presence, so with unholy I will have 112 swings at 2005 damage for a total of 224,571, for a net damage of -4246. I will also have 15 more swings, each of which has a 20% chance of proccing KM (40% crit and 50% chance on crit to proc,) for an extra 3 KM procs. How much damage this adds will depend on which skill it is used on, but it will not make up -133,890 damage lost vs. blood presence.
TLDR/conclusion: With 4-piece T7, Blood Presence is still the best presence for DPS, and Rime procs in the 2nd half of the rotation (when you have 3 FSs) should be skipped except during AOE/multi-mob situations.
I appreciate all the time you put into that,alot of work involved there.Thanks for answering the questions we've ll been asking ourselves who have our 3 piece,but that elusive 4th piece hasn't come out way yet .
In Situation 3, I capture those rime procs and gain a bit of haste, but lose out on the 15% damage bonus from blood presence. Here, I gain the same 14271 damage from HB procs over 5 minutes, I lose none from cycle delay as it doesn't happen with a 1s GCD, for a net gain of 14271 damage. Using my own numbers in Blood Presence, I generate 63962 damage in one cycle, so this is 54368 in Unholy after the 15% from blood is taken away. So, for each full cycle, I lose 9594 damage, which is 143,916 over 5 minutes, for a net damage of -129,644. My swing speed is 3.08 seconds, so in 5 minutes I'll have 97 swings at an average of 2358 damage for a total of 228,817 with blood presence, so with unholy I will have 112 swings for a total of 264,096, for a net damage of 35279. I will also have 15 more swings, each of which has a 20% chance of proccing KM (40% crit and 50% chance on crit to proc,) for an extra 3 KM procs. How much damage this adds will depend on which skill it is used on, but it will not make up -94,365 damage lost vs. blood presence.
Would going into Unholy Presence not allow you to get 3 FS every rotation as well as fit in rime proc's whenever they come up? From my napkin math under that scenario you should be producing 95 RP per rune rotation + gains from Butchery which should cover being able to toss out 3 FS each round with the revised FS glyph. Does that change the outcome of Situation 3 enough to make it more comparable to Situation 2? I mainly ask because the change to the glyph has made me reconsider the possible benefits of unholy presence and maximizing FS usage. The problem I was having was figuring out ways to generate enough RP to make it feasible and then compare that to the damage loss from not being in blood presence. Your post has helped greatly in that regard and now I'm closer to figuring it out but am interested if you factored in the cheaper FS and its impact on Situation 3 is all.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that some of those ITs should be FSs (looked really screwy for a second there).
When I mentioned Unholy actually catching up and perhaps getting ahead of blood presence it was in reference to the changes with the next patch, sorry if I did not make myself clear. Once you get the new and improved FS glyph then you'll be looking at 3 FS each rotation for 7 rotations in a row, followed by one rotation with 4 FSs and then going back to 7 rotations with 3 FS etc.
The calculations you were using for determining execution time of your rotations are off if I'm reading it correctly. With the entire cast sequence of IT, BS, OB, OB, FS, FS, FS taking 10.5s from time you first press a button to when you can press another button, while you are not delaying the rune refresh rate cause of the buffer added in you still cant catch up to the original rune refresh rate unless you also take out howling blast from the first rotation you mentioned in order to allow your global cooldowns to catch up. Otherwise your next rotation will be 1 second behind rune refreshes.
Furthermore because of the mechanic of how death runes work you'll constantly be 1 second behind each rotation as is (see my large post a page or two back). Overall when you factor these two points in it slightly throws off basic comparisons between blood and unholy presence.
I was thinking about our meta gem possibilities today and it seemed to me that 42 ap + run was superior to 21 crit / +3% crit damage for non-jewelcrafters because the two orange gems you would use to fulfill the "two yellow gem" requirement are far better than the two purple gems you would use to activate the crit meta.
Plugging each combo into methods' stat equivalence chart, assuming T7-25 bonuses:
42 AP (Meta), 16 STR + 16 CRIT (Oranges), 4 CRIT + 6 HIT (T7 Slot Bonuses) = 124 AP
Now, is 3% crit damage + 24 stamina worth the ~30 AP difference? I'm sort of at a loss for figuring out how to accurately calculate a number for that 3% multiplier.
I'm not 80 yet so I can't give an accurate number to plug in there, but I think you would take an average hit with both gems, then multiply them out to find the average crit. I can't remember all the crit damage modifiers we have, but it would be something like this
With the amount of crits happening in Frost over the other specs, it seems like the crit bonus damage is a no brainer, but I haven't done the math yet.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that some of those ITs should be FSs (looked really screwy for a second there).
When I mentioned Unholy actually catching up and perhaps getting ahead of blood presence it was in reference to the changes with the next patch, sorry if I did not make myself clear. Once you get the new and improved FS glyph then you'll be looking at 3 FS each rotation for 7 rotations in a row, followed by one rotation with 4 FSs and then going back to 7 rotations with 3 FS etc.
The calculations you were using for determining execution time of your rotations are off if I'm reading it correctly. With the entire cast sequence of IT, BS, OB, OB, FS, FS, FS taking 10.5s from time you first press a button to when you can press another button, while you are not delaying the rune refresh rate cause of the buffer added in you still cant catch up to the original rune refresh rate unless you also take out howling blast from the first rotation you mentioned in order to allow your global cooldowns to catch up. Otherwise your next rotation will be 1 second behind rune refreshes.
Furthermore because of the mechanic of how death runes work you'll constantly be 1 second behind each rotation as is (see my large post a page or two back). Overall when you factor these two points in it slightly throws off basic comparisons between blood and unholy presence.
Yes, I apologize for this mistake. It's been corrected. As for the 'not allowing your GCDs to catch up' point, in 5 minutes you're going to proc a total of 3 HBs that you will use in the first half of the cycle if you use Strategy 2. At .5 seconds each, that amounts to a maximum loss of 1.5 seconds, or 1 GCD in 5 minutes. If you're perfect enough that 1 GCD in 5 minutes is a dealbreaker, hats off to you, but point noted. If you can capture that loss, you lose one IT at about 2k damage, but gain 15k worth of HBs, still a net gain for using HB in the first half. Blood is still vastly superior to Unholy.
After patch, if you can in fact include 3 FS every rotation, you could delay for every rime proc, making the delay worse, or run unholy to capture those rime procs. You would gain 3 more procs vs. current patch, so, 6 procs in 5 minutes vs. 3 that benefit pre-patch. This would lead to a gain of an additional 15k damage vs. the numbers from the preivous post, for a net loss of 80k damage. It's closer, but still inferior. In addition, you'd also benefit from an extra 15% boosted FS with the blood rotation, vs an extra non-15% bonus FS with unholy, so the gap would be a bit wider. I don't, however, know how using a 4th FS affects the rotation beyond the delay. For the front side, an extra FS will cause a small delay but be worth it. a 4th FS on the back side will approximate the same situation with HB in the 4th dump slot, but with somewhat more damage, so the gap would be narrower. I'd guess that 90k damage worth of gap wouldn't be eaten up, but when I have a chance to look at it in-depth, I will.
Edit: it's actually not too hard to look at. 1 extra FS every 8th rotation captured by being in Unholy Presence would be 3.75 extra FS in 5 minutes. This isn't enough damage to close an 80k damage gap with blood presence, so blood is still better.
All of that being said, if you have a poor connection, high miss/dodge rates, or otherwise have trouble maintaining an ideal rotation, you may very well perform better in unholy. From a pure theory-crafting standpoint though, blood will still be better. Only you can evaluate your performance with blood vs. unholy to see if it is an improvement for you.
For the death rune question, it makes things slightly more complex but if you think differently about how to use the runes there is another rotation that addresses the issue. Basically, you use your death rune for IT and your F/U runes for oblits. As the death rune is being used for a single-rune ability, there is never a delay in trying to use it.
(The refresh at 10/0 is assuming no HB - if you have a small pushback due to HB here, it's still better to use HB as explained above.)
In keeping this rotation, you lose no delay waiting for death runes, ever. FF has a 12 second duration, and you are refreshing it at 11.5 seconds in the 2nd half, and at 9 seconds in the first half so no FF down-time. You lose 1 tick of FF damage that you lose anyway if you refresh FF before it falls off. If you miss your rotation by as much as a GCD on the front side, you still have time to get off your oblits before it falls off. On the back side, if you miss by as much as a GCD, you get one BS with no disease boost - a pretty minor loss. This rotation is infinitely sustainable and never requires waiting to use a death rune.
Regarding UH vs Bld presence, remember that tweaking our specs could garner more benefit than swapping away from the additional 15% damage in Blood. Maybe pull a point (or two) from CotT (or swap out Glyph of IT) and put it/them in morbidity or Killing Machine or 2H spec/Bladed Armor (etc.).
Just pointing out that the solution isn't *always* going to be "change presence/rotation", especially when considering that we're pretty close to optimal with what we have now.
I think Feorthas has a good point, and its actually something I tried out last night. I run the rotation Maakh described above (very succinctly, btw, nice job) but this time I did it without Glyph of IT and it made no difference in my rotation. However, I do have the 4 piece bonus, so I wouldn't reccomend trying it without 2/2 COTG and that.
Now that I think about it...the new Glyph of FS is > to IT by a landslide in terms of potential utility. With IT I get an extra ~20-40 (varying on fight and circumstances) per 2 rotations, whereas with a combined total of 5 FS per 2 rotations I save 40 RP. It seems pretty equivalent, until you take into account the gain of +10% dmg on your IT from not having it glyphed in addition to a more compact RP pool. With a 32 RP FS cost, you can do 3 FS for 96 RP, which means you can drop 2/3 RPM in favor of more utility elsewhere, be it Rune Tap, Hungering Cold, Acclimation, or Endless Winter for free interrupts.
Even more alternatively, I suppose you could forsake 4 piece, go offset dps pieces, and get FS/OB/IT glyphs and have more than enough RP. I really like choices.
Oh, and for the record, I think that we can (thanks to math provided above, thanks again) put to rest this whole UH vs. Blood Presence thing. Blood is obviously better, Blizz has posted the design for all of the Presences, and I haven't seen any math that points to Unholy being better. Plus, every time I've come to a raid from PvPing and had UH still on, the main reason I was able to notice it was my relative drop on the damage meters. Its a very significant DPS loss.
Agreed, quite well written Maahk. I'm sure theres some fight length where starting off with OB is a negative damage gain, but wtf cares if its as simple as that. Once I give up on DW spec thats definitely going to be what I'll be pushing.
I tried this (vs dummy) and while it felt like it was a better fit to my cooldowns, my DPS was lower and I was noticing (constantly) that I was blowing KM on ITs. When I compare this rotation (1) to IT OB OB BS FS.., IT OB BS OB FS.. (2), it seems that (1) will tend to use more KMs on IT than (2): dumping FSs just before refreshing IT means you will not be blowing KM on IT unless it comes up during a waiting period after your last FS dump and before the frost rune comes up (which is *always* <= 1.5 seconds if you have the 4pc, and pretty small otherwise). With (1), there's a period >= 4.5/6.0 seconds (first/second half of the rotation) before every IT during which a KM proc will be doomed to be 'wasted' on that IT. With the exception of the first BS in (1), the only way you're going to use KM on something other than IT is if it procs *during* your dump period. Not good design.
That reminds me of another comment for anyone trying to wrap a napkin around a +dps number for the 4 piece: in addition to the added RP gen, it gives you something to do (i.e., cast FS) while you would otherwise be waiting for a protracted/damaged rotation to reset -- every time you find yourself casting one extra FS (because of the 4pc) with the next rotation's frost rune waiting to be IT'd, any delay that had been inserted into your rotation from lag/dodges gets squeegee'd out.
Last edited by Goetterdaemmerung : 12/18/08 at 6:28 PM.
12/16/08, 12:34 PM
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