Kapaneus, that spec has been brought up a few times in this thread. Kurokaze's post on the first page mentions a variation with 2/3 Bloody Vengeance over Abom's Might. It looks potentially viable, but I haven't seen much testing on it.
I wouldn't put too much stock in your target dummy parses. With your blood/froststrike spec, you're giving yourself abom's might, but with your straight frost spec you don't have unleashed rage or whatever like you would in a raid. You'd get a better comparison by putting 17/54/0 up against a 27/44/0 spec with 2/3 bloody vengeance.
EDIT: Took a closer look at your spec, and I noticed you skipped Bloody Strikes. It seems like you'd get more damage out of this spec by taking Bloody Strikes and maybe DRM, and using a cycle that used blood strike more often. With Bloody Strikes and BotN you've got 30% and 15% multipliers on blood strike, which beats out the 20% damage (glyph) and 15% crit (Rime) on obliterate.
IT-PS-BS-BS-Oblit (repeat endlessly)
or
IT-PS-BS-BS-Oblit ... IT-PS-BS-BS-BS-BS (may force you to drop a blood strike to fit in more frost strikes)
or
IT-PS-Oblit-BS-BS ... IT-Oblit-BS-BS-BS ... IT-BS-Oblit-BS-BS (repeat 2-3)
(This last one may not actually work. DRM and BotN in combination make death runes do strange things.)
Kapaneus, that spec has been brought up a few times in this thread.
Go figure. Tried to do a search but nothing came up. I think bloody vengeance could work but you only get a 6% increase and you have to build it up on top of that.
Rotation is the same for both builds with oblits keeping AMight up and blood strikes to make death runes.
I think in the end with the glyph and HB changes, tundra stalker will win out due to it effecting all damage and not just physical.
Yeah, Bloody Vengeance isn't necessarily better than Abom's Might, it just gives you a better comparison if you're solo testing vs straight frost. My point is that since blood/frost provides a raid buff that straight frost doesn't, you're effectively comparing blood/frost with unleashed rage vs straight frost without. In a raid, they'd both have unleashed rage.
The thing that would bother me with a 27/44 build against a 17/54 (or any variation with Thundra Stalker) is that you give up 10% of your Frost Strike, Icy Touch (you should be able to cast the new Icy Touch before the Frost Fever from your old one runs out), Blood Strike, Obliterate and Rime procced Howling Blasts and exchange it for either 10% more AP or for 6% more damage from Blood Strike, Obliterate and normal weapon swings and a few more percent from Blood Strike.
I see the good reason to go 27/44 in a 10 person raid were you do not have a Marksman Hunter or an Enhancement Shaman, but for everything else it just seems inferior.
The thing that would bother me with a 27/44 build against a 17/54 (or any variation with Thundra Stalker) is that you give up 10% of your Frost Strike, Icy Touch (you should be able to cast the new Icy Touch before the Frost Fever from your old one runs out), Blood Strike, Obliterate and Rime procced Howling Blasts and exchange it for either 10% more AP or for 6% more damage from Blood Strike, Obliterate and normal weapon swings and a few more percent from Blood Strike.
I see the good reason to go 27/44 in a 10 person raid were you do not have a Marksman Hunter or an Enhancement Shaman, but for everything else it just seems inferior.
I broke it down earlier. You're forgetting the 8% Strength and 1 Expertise you gain in the 27/44 spec. I will add my voice to the choir stating DRM can destroy your rotation. I played with it for around an hour and couldn't stand it. I can see it adding flexibility to someone in a Perfect Play situation, but I don't play perfectly, so it's more an impediment than a boon.
¬The Original PalaTank, William Erik Petersen The Unbreakable
Tanking with a Paladin since before it was cool.
If you want to test a dual-raid-buff spec (abom's might + icy talons), you should be dummy-ing a spec with two unspent talent points that could spend those points on abom's might. Only if you're happy with the DPS sacrifice such a spec makes should you propose to your raid leader that you be the one to provide both buffs.
Hit cap: 9%/295.11 rating
Spell hit cap: 17%/445.91
Expertise cap:21 skill/172.15 rating
[/list][/indent]
I hit 21 expertise before I hit the actual skill of 172.15
So my question is, am I suppose to get 172.15 or just the 21 skill?
Im confused on what im suppose to be at for cap. Im 25 at 164 6.25%
Maybe Im reading it wrong?
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.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but something about this case isn't adding up to me. You are gaining a total of 6 seconds of delay to your rotation, but that delay doesn't come in the form of one linear cycle does it? On three different occasions you're gaining a delay of 2 seconds to your rotation. If we fudge the 2 seconds down to 1 GCD for simplicity's sake, that means the final skill in each rotation is all that is getting truly "delayed", all the rest of the skills in that rotation would occur in the same timeframe that they would have anyway. The .5 seconds that I'm dropping off of each rotation would add up to one more GCD, but I don't know how much of an effect 3 instances of .5 second delay in your rotation over 5 minutes would truly have in a real world situation against a typical mobile boss.
For example, if a rotation was scheduled to happen from 1'20" to 1'29", and you delayed it into taking place from 1'22" to 1'31", all the skills in that rotation that happen in the 1'22" to 1'29" timeframe aren't truly being delayed, only the last one is. Since the final skill in each rotation is Frost Strike, I'm not sure your conclusion to skip Howling Blast is necessarily incorrect (I'd guess that a single FS is more valuable than a single HB), but the difference might be a little less marked in this case. Of course, my thinking on this could be all wrong too, it just seems odd to me that you're comparing 3 GCD's worth of damage to 4 GCD's worth of damage.
Ok, in regard to what my original "dum" post was about.
My original problem was that I was seeing Obliterate doing ridiculously more damage than Howling Blast whereas others were reporting the opposite. I wondered why this may be and posted the topic. I then later realized that I never trained above Rank 1 Howling Blast and corrected my mistake.
This is where it gets interesting; AFTER training up to the correct rank of Howling Blast, I noticed a considerable drop in the amount of damage Obliterate was doing.
Before:
Rank 1 HB hit was about 900
Rank 1 HB crit was about 1500
Rank 4 Oblit hit was about 1800
Rank 4 Oblit crit was about 4800
After:
Rank 4 HB hit is like 1800
Rank 4 HB crit is like 4300
Rank 4 Oblit hit is like 1300
Rank 4 Oblit crit is like 3800
This is with the Obliterate Glyph and both diseases up.
Also, keep in mind that, even if it does less damage, Obliterate will crit 27% more often than HB, not counting KM/Deathchill. If Oblit is near competitive in damage on a dummy, it will be the better choice in a raid because of the debuffs available.
---
On a completely different subject, has anyone done any solid testing with Razorice? I mean serious checking, not just poking around a bit before swapping back to Fallen Crusader. The reason I'm asking is that it MIGHT be a damage increase for single target damage over Crusader if the debuff averages an 8% damage bonus to frost, in addition to the 2% overall.
I would be interested in seeing a rotation using HB in place of Oblit with a razorice enchant - might be worth checking out. Also, whether or not the combined dps of a DK using razorice and the above rotation alongside a frost/frostfire mage would be better than other enchants and spec combinations.
You may want to check out some of the DW builds if you like HB more than OB even on single target. Also, we've already proven that with 1 Frostfire mage in the group, Razorice benefits the raid by more than enough to make it > FC. If you rock DW though, you can get both and get to see some obnoxiously huge HB and IT =P.
Update on the Razorice modeling: I got the debuff % a bit off--actually, I had it's effectiveness doubled ^^;;--but now that I've tweaked the numbers to the correct values (2% on strikes/melée, guestimating 4% bonus frost) Razorice is at about the same place as crusader is if you wear slightly more Strength-focused gear than I am, even for the crappy 2H HB spam rotation.
That's a shame, ah well. On that note then, if they are roughly comparable, would razorice pull ahead for group dps if you had anyone else who had frost damage (whether another frost dk or a frost damage based mage)?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but something about this case isn't adding up to me. You are gaining a total of 6 seconds of delay to your rotation, but that delay doesn't come in the form of one linear cycle does it? On three different occasions you're gaining a delay of 2 seconds to your rotation. If we fudge the 2 seconds down to 1 GCD for simplicity's sake, that means the final skill in each rotation is all that is getting truly "delayed", all the rest of the skills in that rotation would occur in the same timeframe that they would have anyway. The .5 seconds that I'm dropping off of each rotation would add up to one more GCD, but I don't know how much of an effect 3 instances of .5 second delay in your rotation over 5 minutes would truly have in a real world situation against a typical mobile boss.
For example, if a rotation was scheduled to happen from 1'20" to 1'29", and you delayed it into taking place from 1'22" to 1'31", all the skills in that rotation that happen in the 1'22" to 1'29" timeframe aren't truly being delayed, only the last one is. Since the final skill in each rotation is Frost Strike, I'm not sure your conclusion to skip Howling Blast is necessarily incorrect (I'd guess that a single FS is more valuable than a single HB), but the difference might be a little less marked in this case. Of course, my thinking on this could be all wrong too, it just seems odd to me that you're comparing 3 GCD's worth of damage to 4 GCD's worth of damage.
All of this is from a purely theorycrafting perspective, which should be linked to real world results. On the rotations in question - those with 3 FSs, the rotation would not be 10.5 seconds as you suggest, but instead would be 12 with HB (IT, BS, OB, OB, FS, FS, FS, HB = 8 GCDs = 12s.) Over 5 minutes you would lose 6 seconds to delay (3 12-second rotations of a total of 6 procs on average,) which would in fact be linear as each delay pushes back your next rotation and the next after that in turn, etc, adding up to a 6 second loss if you could execute everything perfectly for that 5 minutes.
I'm not saying you or anyone for that matter can do that, but I am saying that purely from a theoretical perspective this is the case. As I noted in a subsequent post relating to Unholy Presence with all of the new patch changes, in practice you and only you will be able to determine what works best for you when you take all things into consideration.
With a highly-mobile boss for example, one may very well perform better in Unholy Presence because of increased mobility and better burst damage. Someone with high latency may benefit more from Unholy Presence. Etc. It will depend on the situations involved, latency, personal skill, raid makeup, etc. as to what works best for each individual.
All of this is from a purely theorycrafting perspective, which should be linked to real world results. On the rotations in question - those with 3 FSs, the rotation would not be 10.5 seconds as you suggest, but instead would be 12 with HB (IT, BS, OB, OB, FS, FS, FS, HB = 8 GCDs = 12s.) Over 5 minutes you would lose 6 seconds to delay (3 12-second rotations of a total of 6 procs on average,) which would in fact be linear as each delay pushes back your next rotation and the next after that in turn, etc, adding up to a 6 second loss if you could execute everything perfectly for that 5 minutes.
I'm not saying you or anyone for that matter can do that, but I am saying that purely from a theoretical perspective this is the case. As I noted in a subsequent post relating to Unholy Presence with all of the new patch changes, in practice you and only you will be able to determine what works best for you when you take all things into consideration.
With a highly-mobile boss for example, one may very well perform better in Unholy Presence because of increased mobility and better burst damage. Someone with high latency may benefit more from Unholy Presence. Etc. It will depend on the situations involved, latency, personal skill, raid makeup, etc. as to what works best for each individual.
My argument isn't in favor of using Unholy Presence (I doubt that it will ever be able to compete with Blood), but there was something about your case 1 scenario of not using Rime procs that just wasn't quite clicking with me as far as my own experiences go, and I think I may have just figured out what it is. Your argument is that using a Rime proc along with 3 Frost strikes will cause you to start your rotation at 12 seconds after your first frost rune has repopped, thus placing you outside of the 8 second rule and giving your next set of runes a 10 second cooldown, costing you 2 seconds of dps time, correct?
My current understanding of the 8 second rule was that when a new rune refreshes, if you use it within 2 seconds of when it refreshes, it will have <10 second cooldown instead of a 10 second cooldown. However, after beating on the target dummy in Acheros for a little while, I think the reverse may actually be true. If you -wait- at least 2 seconds before using a rune after it activates, it will have an 8 second cooldown instead of a 10 second cooldown. If you use a rune as soon as it comes up, or before 2 seconds have passed, it will have a 10 second cooldown instead of 8. I'd like some other folks to test this for themselves and see if I'm crazy though.
I'm using Magic Runes as my rune timer, which has a convenient number that can be set to tell you the cooldown on a rune after it is used. I did a few rotations while using 3 FS and 1 HB Rime proc, and noticed that Magic Runes was telling me that my runes had an 8 second cooldown when I started using them again. Then I used two sets of runes in a row with no RP dump, and the second set had a 10 second cooldown. So I tried using one set of runes, auto attacking for 20 seconds, then using the next set of runes, and they had an 8 second cooldown. There doesn't seem to be an upper limit on how long you can wait either, as long as you wait at least 2 seconds your runes will refresh with an 8 second cooldown. So my current thinking is as follows:
1) Your first set of runes after entering combat will have a 10 second cooldown.
2) If you use a rune after it refreshes, but before 2 seconds have passed, it will have a 10 second cooldown.
3) If you use a rune after it refreshes, and wait 2 seconds before using it, it will have an 8 second cooldown.
If I've "discovered" something that everyone already knows that's ok too =p But this is the behavior I'm seeing in game right now, and I'd like to either be told I'm crazy and that's how it's always been, that this does in fact go against current theory, or that I'm just plain wrong. If it does it'd be good if some other people load up some rune timers and verify if they can see the same behvaior, and I think it would also imply that all Rime procs are good Rime procs.
Went 17/54/0 I am hit capped both spells and yellow, and I have great gear. I have 3,7k unbuffed ap with 29% crit.
I'm playing and executing a super tight standard rotation:
PS IT BS BS OB FS
PS IT OB OB FS
and At best in five mans I'm hitting 1900 dps with a TG warrior and Ret pally in the group. What gives... is the frost dps really that terrible because Ive heard excellent things about it?
I mean tri spec dual weild I do 2300 dps on the nemesis dummy so I dont know. Any suggestions?
My argument isn't in favor of using Unholy Presence (I doubt that it will ever be able to compete with Blood), but there was something about your case 1 scenario of not using Rime procs that just wasn't quite clicking with me as far as my own experiences go, and I think I may have just figured out what it is. Your argument is that using a Rime proc along with 3 Frost strikes will cause you to start your rotation at 12 seconds after your first frost rune has repopped, thus placing you outside of the 8 second rule and giving your next set of runes a 10 second cooldown, costing you 2 seconds of dps time, correct?
My current understanding of the 8 second rule was that when a new rune refreshes, if you use it within 2 seconds of when it refreshes, it will have <10 second cooldown instead of a 10 second cooldown. However, after beating on the target dummy in Acheros for a little while, I think the reverse may actually be true. If you -wait- at least 2 seconds before using a rune after it activates, it will have an 8 second cooldown instead of a 10 second cooldown. If you use a rune as soon as it comes up, or before 2 seconds have passed, it will have a 10 second cooldown instead of 8. I'd like some other folks to test this for themselves and see if I'm crazy though.
I've not personally tested this as I don't use rune timers, but everything I've read has suggested that the 'grace period' is 1.5 seconds. If it is 2 seconds, this would still cause difficulty, as in order to benefit you'd need perfect (0) latency and perfect timing to pull it off. If it is in fact more than two seconds as you suggest, that would be quite different from what has been accepted up to this point. If anyone else wants to test this, it could be a game changer if true.
Went 17/54/0 I am hit capped both spells and yellow, and I have great gear. I have 3,7k unbuffed ap with 29% crit.
I'm playing and executing a super tight standard rotation:
PS IT BS BS OB FS
PS IT OB OB FS
and At best in five mans I'm hitting 1900 dps with a TG warrior and Ret pally in the group. What gives... is the frost dps really that terrible because Ive heard excellent things about it?
I mean tri spec dual weild I do 2300 dps on the nemesis dummy so I dont know. Any suggestions?
I'd first suggest reading some of these 15 pages, as on nearly every page after the first couple there has been a more optimal rotation posted. So you don't have to dig, it's something like IT>BS>OB>OB>Dump; IT>OB>BS>OB>Dump, or OB>OB>Dump>IT>BS; OB>OB>Dump>BS>IT, depending on how you prefer to use your death runes. The latter is more optimal but some find it more difficult to use. Either needs to start with one blood rune having been converted to a death. This can be done either by using blood tap or by using a 'starter' rotation to get going. IT>PS>BS>BS>OB>Dump works for the former, while OB>OB>BS>BS>Dump works for the latter.
If you've just respecced, make sure you have appropriate glyphs (OB and IT being most important for now, with FS coming in patch.)
Also, your profile is out of date if your main is a DK, so I am unable to view your talent point allocation and gear to be able to give any other meaningful suggestion.
All that said, I have 3350 AP, 31% crit, and 7.99% hit unbuffed. I've hit nearly 4k DPS on Patchwerk, but get much much lower on a dummy. Raid buffs (including flask/elixirs) make a huge difference. If you really are spell hit capped unbuffed, I'd recommend regemming/enchanting/gearing for +Str insead of +hit. 2h weapon DPS is also important - this spec is built for a 2h weapon, so if you are still using 2 1hs, that is a problem.
Went 17/54/0 I am hit capped both spells and yellow, and I have great gear. I have 3,7k unbuffed ap with 29% crit.
I'm playing and executing a super tight standard rotation:
PS IT BS BS OB FS
PS IT OB OB FS
and At best in five mans I'm hitting 1900 dps with a TG warrior and Ret pally in the group. What gives... is the frost dps really that terrible because Ive heard excellent things about it?
I mean tri spec dual weild I do 2300 dps on the nemesis dummy so I dont know. Any suggestions?
As the poster above me mentioned, read the thread; we may start a new one soon to get the front post updated or something but, until then, you're kinda stuck just browsing until you find something useful. I'm not trying to pile on you or anything but it really is in the forum rules that you're supposed to make at least a slight effort to see if your answer is already here before you post and people have been given infractions for less.
Moving on, Frost does it's best DPS during trash pulls where every other FU pair can be used for a Howling Blast, especially if you start to overflow with RP and use Hungering Cold to refresh FF; I've seen 2500 dps in a five man with minimal buffs during trash pulls relatively often and can crack 3k if the stars align (3100-3300 AP / Hitcapped / 26.6% crit in a dps spec that contains HC; check my armory for details). Single Target damage is dramatically lower but partly because I really don't have awesome gear yet. Heck, one of our tanks has a Ret Pally alt (BS/Mining) who was doing as much DPS as our blood DK 2 days after he was 80, even though his non-BS pieces were notably worse and both had Titansteel Dedtroyers.
In my opinion, the key to excelling at a frost spec is maintaining RP Generation to support our double RP dump rotation. While was noted earlier that our best rotation has an IT, BS, and two Obliterates, it also has 1 7/8 Frost Strikes and, because of how the BS moves around due to rune CDs, sometimes has a forced third dump GCD--usually all you could fit here is a Rime proc HB, but that's more output than the BS so the 'loss' is actually a gain!--where you lose your death runes and either Blood Tap or just shrug and start the rotation again next time you have a F up. In order to maintain your rotation, I'd suggest dumping your RP every time you have enough for a FS on a boss; this results in a rotation that looks like:
IT BS OB *FS* OB *FS/HB*
HOWEVER, this isn't set in stone at all because you never quite have enough RP from this rotation to cast that second FS--you're 5 short. Thus, when you start back up again, you can (and should) FS immidiately after your IT. In fact, forget completely about frost having a "rotation" and treat it as a priority queue like so:
1) Icy Touch (Only if FF has < 2s left or if restarting rotation)
2) Blood Strike (only use B; avoid using D unless you have two!)
3) Frost Strike
4) Obliterate (Unless you would use DD)
5) Rime/HB
In fact, this would work much better as a flowchart but I can't create and upload one right now :-/. Anyway, they key is to fit in as many Frost Strikes and Obliterates in without letting your % buffs from diseases/Frost Fever drop.
And yes, plague strike is trash for us; don't bother with it as it'll eat your Oblit Us!
It takes a good 2H for OB to outperform HB. Also, depending on group makeup, if there's a lack of sundering warriors or druids to reduce armor, then HB sometimes still outperforms OB, even for single target. OB is rather lackluster until you get into the purple weapons. Post patch, HB will be off CD which will be pretty hilarious for AE and even just as a dps mainstay for lesser geared frost.
My personal rotation (which has been working well for me) is OB OB (BS IT) Dump, and you just rotate the IT and BS each rotation. For AE, IT Pest HB FS HB Dump. That's about all there is for Frost. Frost tanking consists of the AE approach.
I am experimenting with a 20/51/0 frost dps build. The idea was that I would maximize death rune procs allowing me to use certain abilities more often. It does solid dps, but I'm finding situations where all six runes are converted to death runes and I am unable to use abilitites like Howling Blast or Obliterate even though the cooldowns are supposed to be ready. I just reported this "bug" last night, but I was wondering if anyone has insight as to how death runes work. It was as if the skills in question were still looking for standard runes even though I had six active death runes.
12/21/08, 8:11 PM
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