dr_AllCOM3

It could be, that I did a mistake. I forgot to divide the damage by the weapon speed . Does BCB not count as a white hit? It never glances.

Edit: I included your rotation. It's about 100dps less.

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Matterhorn

Using the build listed in the OP, is the STR buff from Unbreakable Armor making enough impact to incorporate it into the rotation every time it comes off cooldown?

If so, at what state of a rotation are you placing it? I have tried using it at different points in a rotation and can't find a time to use it that I don't have everything cooling down.

 

Baphomette

Unbreakable Armor would be another 1-200 AP with 5/5 BA in addition to its inherent Strength buff -- that's fairly significant. Unfortunately you only have a 50/50 chance to catch a BA pulse with UA up, unless someone's written a addon that keeps track of when BA polls your armor value.

 

OmniDo

I still dont quite understand the hype behind Obliterate.
While I give credit to all the number crunchers here; the analysis, graphs (or grafs) that have shown examples, I fail to hit any of the numbers speculated here, even scaled down to lower levels.
Obliterate simply does not do nearly enough DPS as is shown with the given rotation(s).

Is there some uber-scaling increase at 80 that Im not seeing?
At best, I can pull around 650 single-target dps as a level 68 with 45 points in frost.
Ive tested numerous rotations with Obliterate, Howling Blast, Icy touch, and Frost Strike.

The highest DPS (statistically) that Ive been able to achieve doesnt actually follow a static rotation at all, but instead uses the formula of: Use <x> Ability before <y> and Always keep all relevant abilities on cooldown.

So while I have a standard opening rotation, the procession quickly changes into the aforementioned formula depending on the duration of the fight, or the conditions.
When DPS'ing or Tanking, I always use the following procession to determine what ability to use.
1) Does the target(s) have both diseases?
2) Is Howling Blast available?
3) Do I have enough runic power for Rune Strike/Frost Strike?
4) Are all other abilities except Blood Strike on CD?

Basically, I do a dynamic cognitive "Checksum" for my rotation, which rules out any static rotation.
Since I always have all relevant abilities on cooldown, I am never left "Waiting" for a rune.
The only time I have an idle moment is if I use Death and Decay as an opener,
In that event, I am always waiting for the runes to Cooldown since I use all 6 runes in about 5 seconds and the cooldown is much longer.

All my own numbers suggest that Obliterate is not only a waste of two runes, but doesnt seem to do near the damage that IT or HB does, over time.
Additionally, IT only requires 1 rune which is never a problem, and there are bonuses to its damage modifier if one specs for them.
I was tempted to use the Glyph that gives the extra runic power, but decided instead to just pickup Butchery.

I will do a few more tests to see if Obliterate is actually worth the rotation on single target, but since I spend more time "Tanking" in Outland Dungeons as of late, OB loses its value when compared to HB for Multi-target tanking.

As for DPS, Ive tested dynamic rotations with just OB, OB & FS (when available), Single Disease + OB, Duo-diseas + OB, etc... and have never produced the DPS numbers single-target or multi-target that I have when using HB instead.
Could be a scaling issue for later levels, or that Im not 80 yet.
Just an observation.

 

Brutorious

Im not much of a number cruncher, but obliterate will scale with your weapon and you also take into account the glyph.

Howling blast is nice, especially when you consider leveling up it usually does a few hundred more then obliterate because your constantly changing weapons and for the most part they arent that great leveling up.

I also take into account with talents in a frost dps build obliterate has something like +27% crit from talents alone. add in end game crit from gear and your looking at 50%+ crit rating from obliterate.

My big question still remains is why is unholy more popular for dps then frost.

 

Hraka

At your lvls I would be suprised if the magic spells didnt hit harder than the strikes. Obliterate scales greatly with weapon upgrades/glyphs/sigils but is not that strong of a base skill without the gear. Also at your lvl the spells you get change in relation to each other as you get new ranks so its almost pointless trying to base your playing off the numbers used above for the set lvl 80 ranks/gear.

 

DrJekyll

a buddy and I rerolled DK's in exp.

He is currently ahead of me in gearing and is spec'd unholy. I was finding blood a hard pill to swallow as I never felt the spec really "fit" with how i wanted to play DK.

I was reading through this and spec'd frost DPS. I was blown away with the results. I am doing more ST dps than i was as Blood with poor gearing (couple epic, mostly blues.. ARMORY!)

I am currently planning to swap my spec around a bit.. but had a couple questions.

1. I am considering swapping to frost aura for the resist bonuses. I am almost exclusively pve, and raid whenever my schedule allows it to. Would the resists be significant enough to benefit? (it'd still allow paladins to use other aura's as well since i am assuming they do not stack) The points would come out of Icy Reach

2. I am currently at 2/3 in Runic Power Mastery (RPM), which i took because in certain situations it will allow me to rip off 3 straight FS's. Would a third point really benefit me there?

Thanks for all the information on this extremely under-rated spec for DK's DPS.

 

Hraka

I never paid attention when I was actually speccd for it but I'd assume that the resistances dont stack. This of course leads us to another problem where these two talent points net us with a buff that is 4-5 resistance stronger than a balance or resto druid's talented Gift of the Wild. So while your aura would be stronger, any resto druid or balance druid in your raid would already be bringing 75.6 resistance to the group. I havent seen raided the dragons yet but unless there are fights where you need multiple resistances all at the same time then a single shaman or paladin can cover the necessary resistance buff for a fight with a stronger aura(/totem).

The main use I see for the resistance aura is in PVP where that 80 to all would actually be pretty useful as you'll be getting spells from multiple schools of magic back to back.

 

Jebraltar

Frost Aura stacks with other resistance auras.

 

Hraka

Holy cow man. Thats nice, currently cause of the ease of most raids I'm sure its not all that important but down the line that extra 80 to everyone in the raid would be a nice addition, where would you take out 2 points from the standard Frost dps build to add?

 

Wynna

Maybe this is true with paladin auras but when I had a frost DK and a hunter in my group yesterday I tested this and Aspect of the Wild and Frost Aura did *not* stack, I had 130 nature resistance and 80 resistance on everything else.

 

dr_AllCOM3

It doesn't stack with anything. The Frost Aura is worthless.
I wouldn't be surprised if Acclimation is the same.

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◊ Eej

Acclimation definitely does stack with other auras. You can also be acclimatized to multiple schools (including Holy if I'm not mistaken).

 

shed

It stacks with paladin auras, it doesn't however stack with things like Mark of the Wild.

 

Pyros

Doesn't stack with totems or hunter aura either, so not sure if the stacking with paladin aura isn't a bug. I've also not confirmed it does stack myself, haven't had the occasion, it used to stack on beta but that was a long time ago. Supposedly Devotion aura and stoneskin totem stack too, so might simply be issues with paladin aura, and will eventually get fixed.

Edit: Actually I remembered a sapphiron try with a paladin frost aura, and it deifnitely didn't stack. I'd be tempted to assume it doesn't stack with other auras too(fire and shadow) so yeah, frost aura is mostly a pvp talent, or a 5man talent. In raids it will be pretty uncommon to not have either a shaman, a paladin or a druid with imp motw in your group.

 

shed

You're right it seems. I tested this out again and this time I didn't stack. I believe it might of had something to do with our Paladin crashing through the fight and logging back in while we were in combat.

 

Feorthas

Finally had access to a working desktop to play around a bit more with Killing Machine and, barring further refinement, I have some solid damage output values and relative worth. Before getting into that though, I'm going to go over my methodology:

Killing Machine is a 50% procrate on melée crits (white swings or a white-replacement will trigger it)--so I modeled it as a 1/2 critrate damage bonus equal to the diffrence between a normal and critical hit of either the optimal recipient, Frost Strike, or a weighted FS/IT replacement (weighted at a 2.5:1 ratio for an 18 second rotation or 2.5:2 for a pair of 10s rotations).

KM is able to be simpliied in this manner because of how DK D/TPS rotations work: burn runes ASAP then dump RP (rinse, repeat). As KM only effects IT/HB/FS, it will either be removed once one of those abilities has been used and multiple, pre-use procs will have no effect. There is a chance that KM can trigger immidiately after being used but, over an infinite number of swings, these occurrences will be outliers. Admittedly, in order to more properly model how much damage KM is going to be responsible for, I need to further refine my weighting of IT and FS, accounting for a much larger number of swings after IT and before FS but this will not effect the final outcome simply because I have already tested for results under optimal usage (optimal being KM only affecting FS).

With that said, here are the results:

With 2000 AP, a 20% critrate, 6% hit, 3% expetise, a 150dps, 3.5 speed weapon, and 25% haste (Imp Icy Talons line), Killing Machine would account for about a 0.65% damage increase in both 10(/12) second and 18(/20) second rotations. While one would expect this value to scale upward with an increasing critrate, it must be taken into account that an increase in crit will also increase one's melée and special damage, keeping KM's effective output from rising faster than your normal damage output.

So, is KM worth the talent points?

Well, if you don't mind me fudging numbers to make them nicer for mental math, let's say that you have a 3.0 speed weapon, after haste, and a 10% procrate for KM, you have a solid chance of seeing a proc every 30 seconds (1 in 10 swings). Now, seeing that the relative worth of Deathchill is exactly one of these crits every two minutes, about 4x the effective procrate is pretty solid; HOWEVER, KM has a *chance* to proc whereas Deathchill can be *used*. For this reason, over an infinite duration, KM is indeed worth about 4x as much as Deathchill but, over finite (and short) durations, Deathchill is vastly more powerful, especially when modeled in a spreadsheet that is certainly a work-in-progress.

I'll see if I can get some kind of 'relative worth' worked out once I get back home from vacation today but, until then, I'm liking Deathchill + Black Ice over Killing Machine myself.

 

GhostRidah

I Like to go 17/52/2 and take the 2 points out of icy reach and putting it into vicious strikes, gives a bit more damage but I mainly get it for the stronger DS crits which heal for more, helps in aoe fights and takes a little strain off the healers, plus its good to see some nice PS crits.

 

Kazrin

Dear Sirs and Madames,

I've been speccing a lot between Unholy and Frost after trying frost out on a whim and being very pleased with its killing power. I hope the diligence and research here will further illuminite its prospects as a dps spec. That said, I have been scouring the forums for a dissection of Fallen Crusader versus Cinderglacier. Fallen Crusader lasts a good chunk of time and scales all attacks, but as Frost, with the ability to load up two huge FSs or HBs, does Cinderglacier have any real viability for dps? As a few other posters have said, it's awesome to see folks delving deeper into the frost numbers. The tree has a lot of nice toys in it, and -- for me -- is pretty fun to play.

 

Alghazanth

Hello, long time reader first time poster.Anyway my question: is it worth to cap ones spell hit as frost?((445.91)) or is the general consensus to just cap specials((295.11)) or to shoot for 367.22 ((assuming a shadowpriest or moonkin is currently in a raid))Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

zagor

Short answer yes. Icy Touch and Howling Blast are spells. Long answer, read the DPS compedium.

 

shed

Trying to cap spell hit would be a waste of stats at this point, you won't be spamming more IT's than any other spec and HB won't be used over OB.

 

zagor

Please, read the DPS compedium before asking questions which have been answered many times.

Capping 2h melee hit (and spell hit) is very much worth it. One missed Icy Touch or BS throws off whole rotation and results in dps loss. With melee hit capped at 9%, in a raid you'll probably be spell hit capped too (virulence, draenei in party and misery type debuff on boss).

 

Solithaira

I'm noticing a couple builds in here are picking up both Blood of the North and Death Rune Mastery. Now I myself thought for the longest time that this was a great idea because you get more talents converting runes into Death runes, and thus providing more flexible rotations.

However, this is somewhat pointless because we only use our frost/unholy runes for casting Obliterate (which requires frost/unholy runes). We thus don't need to wildcard these runes at all.

DRM works for Blood because the blood spec actually uses the converted frost/unholy runes to cast Heart Strike...but this talent is a waste in a frost spec.

 

Nicolai

Does anyone have answers for these questions about Razorice:

• What's the proc rate? PPM? Chance on hit?
• Does it have an internal cooldown?
• Does the 2% extra weapon damage apply to strikes, or just white hits?
• Is the 2% extra damage affected by talents that increase the percentage of frost damage done?
• How useful is this if you have a frost mage around?