Thanks for taking the time to run these. Your results show what I was expecting with a OBx2 rotation pulling even with the IT spam rotation once betrayer/sigil of awareness comes into play. Also it's interesting to note your highest DPS numbers were in UP even for the less GCD intensive OBx2 rotation.

I'm going to stick with ITx6 until I get a betrayer, and then ill reevaluate.

The first set of runes is little tricky as you use only one OB and one or two BS (not sure now). After that you will have all you need to do IT-BS-OBx2. If you will start with blood tap you should actually have no problems from start: 1D for IT, 1B for BS, 2U 2F for OBx2.

UP was so much easier to play = less mistakes = higher dps. BP may be better when you get some practice I believe, it just have better scaling and reward more for better play. Of course some rotations like 6xIT will never be viable in BP due to GCD usage.

Overall I went back to good old Unholy where I feel like home. It was nice to see that 2h Frost is viable now - spec without pets babysitting and with big numbers on screen, good both for aoe and single target.

Delete please.

To me it sounds like this is what you're doing:
Frost Blood Frost+Unholy Unholy+Death
(IT BS OB OB )
->
Frost Death Frost+Unholy Unholy+ Blood
(IT BS OB O.. Ohsnap, need to wait for the next frost rune)

This is how I personally understand the rotation, the BS and OB swap places often but the most important part is that you never ever use that death rune created from your last blood strike for another blood strike:
Frost Frost+Unholy Blood Unholy+Death
(IT OB BS OB )
->
Frost Frost+Unholy Unholy+Death Blood
(IT OB OB BS )

You are right, the 4th obliterate is delayed by 2.5 seconds. I also tried to change the position of the obliterates and blood strikes in the rotation, but sooner or later I get into another delay. I will try your rotation as soon as I get to a target dummy again.

does anyone know how to prevent frost strikes from being resisted? I keep getting partial resists on my strikes.

Meanwhile I tried several rotations and how to work in frost strikes without causing delays.

The one that worked best for me was:

Oblit-FS-Oblit-FS-IT-BS-RP Dump/Rime Procs

(BT and HotW shortly before start, the RP gain allows you to throw in the first FS)
For the second rotation only you have to change the position of IT and BS.

Major benefit: Your Blood and Death Rune come from cooldown 1.5 seconds after each other. The Death Rune is never used by Obliterate but only by Icy Touch (missed Icy Touchs do not mess up this kind of rotation anymore since missed Death Runes will refresh as Death Runes again since 3.0.8). So you will never sit there waiting for a Frost/Death Rune in order to strike the next Obliterate.

Only strange thing I recognized: Sometimes when you are close to the end of the rotation with one active blood and death rune left and active the UA Macro the blood rune will not be activated directly after you press the macro again as death rune but instead stay on cooldown (so you loose one Blood Strike in this situation). Till now I can't figure out why this happens, but I will test it tomorrow over a longer period of time again.

IT -> PT -> HB -> OB -> repeat
- in case of rime do OBx2
- spam FS somewhere in between
- obviously you can change OB to ITx2 if you feel like it

Worked fine for me and is easy to do, will be easier w/o broken HB cooldown.

BP or UP?

Tried out ITx6 last night in naxx 10. really liked it. In my gear i was pulling 3k+ on most encounters. One question, If haste were stacked to bring down your GCD, could you use BP with this rotation? since IT and FS count as spells for the gcd (as far as i know) stacking haste seems like it could be a good idea.

FS does not from what I can tell.

Instead of getting rune tap and improved rune tap you just get death rune mastery 3 points in there then one point in veteran. Then the rest of the points in frost which you should know for the 21/50 spec for two handers. Rotation I use is BS BS OB OB FS FS then IT IT IT IT IT IT FS FS FS FS. I rinse and repeat, also to note, I am not 4 set bonus. I am pulling 3k dps on boss dummy with this rotation, higher than the other rotations given for two handers.

i've been wondering for quite a while, what specc / rotation scales better with raid buffs?
i tried 21/50/0 (without rune mastery on blood)
rotations:
IT>OB>OB>BS>FS dump (blood presence)

PS>IT>OB>BS>BS>FSx3
PS>IT>OB>IT>IT>FSx4 (unholy presence)

i did both the rotations above on training dummy, and got the following numbers

"OB" rotation + sigil of awareness + HoW:
3.1k DPS

"IT" rotation + sigil of IT + HoW:
3.5k DPS

then i removed half my gear, leaving only 4 piece bonus, and some other hit gear.
"OB" rotation + sigil of awareness:
2.1k DPS

"IT" rotation + sigil of IT:
2k DPS

so i'm kinda inclined to say that the "IT" rotation, or rather, that IT scales better with Attack Power than OB. But, i am not sure at all.
Can someone that has the answer enlighten me? Thanks.

IT does scale better with attack power than does Obliterate, because it doesn't scale with weapon damage at all. I covered the basic scaling for each of the main abilities used by frost a few pages back, in the argument about scaling of ITx6 vs IT.BS.2Ob.

the thing is, FS does. and ITx6 rotation provides more RP for FS's then Ob rotations. If you use UP and ITx6 rotation, you can easily get 6 IT's and 3 FS's with time to spare, it's even possible to fit 10 moves into 10 seconds and get a forth FS if you are spot on, have the 130 RP tank and the FS glyph.

So purely from a % of weapon damage standpoint.

Ob rotation of

IT-BS-FS-OB-FS-OB-FS repeat gets 480% weapon damage assuming a glyph of obliterate or 960% in two turns.

BS BS OB OB FS FS

IT IT IT IT IT IT FS FS FS FS gets 720% weapon damage in the same amount of time, plus 4 more icy touches (which average at 4k + crits on the WWS's i've seen) as well as HB's if Freezing Fog procs.

I'm not 100% sure which scales better in the long run, but It looks like they are pretty even.

Unholy presence does not accelerate rune refreshes.

Exactly.

And from a raiding standpoint, the ITx6 rotation is VASTLY easier to correct if you make a mistake, without losing out on too much DPS.

I'm actually agreeing with Tepesh (post below me) so I took out this stuff and put it in the "Looking for Top DPS 3.0.8" where it belongs in the first place (if even there)

Am i the only one scared by what happens in this thread? What about number-crunching and useing spreadsheets? Whom does it benefit if dozens of people post hundreds of screenshots to show how much dps they can do on the dummies?

I hope this all comes back to theorycrafting and all of those "wow! look at my dps!!!11111" stops.

From what I can see in your rotation, the reason why your not getting 6 IT's is because your throwing PS and IT in your first rotation and using PS to start your second. If you read the IT rotation above you'll notice that PS isn't used in this rotation. BS BS OB OB is your first rotation to get your Death Runes, then you'll have all the runes for 6 IT's.

You aren't the only one.

I've tried to explain that the dummy really isn't a good example of real-world 25m raiding unless you have a warrior and boomkin to debuff the dummy for you (sunder + IFF) but nobody seems to care that obliterate does 82.5% of it's unbuffed raid damage without those two debuffs (and IFF adds that 3% spellhit too, so your spells are missing a bit more often too). This alone cuts the damage gap between 6IT and IT BS OB OB to basically nil (no glyphs) and that's without penalizing the former for being in UH Pres.

Posting recounts of your target dummy damage is no longer theorycrafting after the initial testing of a spec; going to a raid and using your new spec/rotation on patchwerk, and then posting two WWS--a before/after--is what needs to happen now. As childish as this may sound, it's pretty much the best way to put it right now: "Pics or it didn't happen" (and by pics, I mean WWS of 6IT vs IT BS OB OB in 3.0.8, which will be up by this Tuesday (2 weeks of 3.0.8 raiding) at earliest).

Unless my math is totally and completely effed up, 6IT won't pull ahead of IT BS OB OB; 6IT is the new HB instead of OB rotation people--it sounds awesome but it really does come up short based on everything that I've seen... Unless I'm the only person on the planet capable of maintaining a proper IT BS OB OB that is; in that case, I totally understand swapping to UH because it is way, way easier. In fact, that's how I know that I messed up and didn't swap back to blood after running/farming/whatever--UH just makes life easier (but it doesn't increase your dps over blood except for allowing for more screwups).

---

Regarding actual Theorycrafting, I'm hoping to have a Garg/Ghoul Pet compliant sheet by EoD today. I'll probably put up predicted 0/44/27 numbers after I get it finished.

Not to start any argument towards dummies vs a 25 man raid (I think raids are better) it's just that since the patch hit this week people want to see what's happening with specs now I guess. I didn't respec out of 32/39 when patch first hit because I wanted to see the numbers (wasn't impressed) so now I'm on my respec binge till I figure out which is best. I guess once this tuesday comes and goes we'll see a lot more WWS reports and perhaps more specs to go by (I want to see your 44/27, I'll be taking in this 21/50 tomorrow, albeit 10man naxx, maybe some 25 man, we gotta pug that with another guild tho X.x)

Really the best way to do that would be the target dummies (though I wish I got a warrior in on mine so I'd have sunders)

I did move my stuff though because the DPS 3.0.8 thread suits it more.

(and also, I guess I post more to myself and people like me who do more 10 man than 25 man so we don't generally get the full spectrum of raid buffs.