• Zurm

1) I don't know.
2) I would assume so, since Cinderglacier and Fallen Crusader both have them.
3) Only white hits.
4) Yes.
5) Not sure, but why the hell would your mages be raiding as frost?

 

Paladia

It does seem like frost is severely lacking in DPS. Even with half my geared being epic and using the second best weapon in the game [The Jawbone] I'm hard pressed to keep above 1600 dps on a single target boss (unbuffed and without cooldowns, without self buffs).

 

Zadus

But why even mention what dps you get when your all by yourself?

Say for instance i cant get more dps by myself as blood but when it comes to us being raid buffed you get more. So then what does it matter who gets more unbuffed?

I noticed the other day me and friends were doing heroic strat. I pulled 3500 dps on malganis as unholy spec. After that heroic we did another one but this time i didn't have my enhancement shaman in the group. I couldn't even reach 3k dps on a single target boss.

So who cares what your dps is all alone. What is your dps fully buffed?

 

Paladia

I mention it because its the easiest and fastest to test by yourself without any external factors. I have around 2.3k dps fully raid buffed on a single target, as Unholy, you can pretty much add 1k to that number.

Tried it with both going for epidemic in unholy and without.

As for the importance of unbuffed DPS, it is of value for PvP, where you can rarely (if ever) count on having raid buffs.

 

Nicolai

That type of anecdotal evidence isn't worth much. In order to decide that a Frost spec doesn't do enough DPS, we'd need some WWS to review as well as spec and raid comp information. You're seeing subpar DPS solo. That's something to look at.

Can you break down your spec and rotation so we have something to work with?

 

EwokChilli

As for the IT->BS->OB->OB, you can always just macro in Blood Tap to turn a blood rune into a death rune before the rotation and it's never bad to have pop your 2nd blood into an extra death rune because you sometimes do get parried/dodged/immune which nix's your death rune.

As for comparing dps, my dps meter is always telling me that my FS is doing about 30-35% of my overall damage (because it ignores armor i would assume). I haven't gone back to look, but if you don't include the armor of mobs, then Frost really would fall behind on dps compared to the other 2 specs because IT/HB/FS just don't make up for all the excess white damage(unholy) or HS(blood) that the other specs have. But at level 77, my OB crits for about 2700-2800, and FS is critting for 3100-3600. I'm running a solid 1400-1420 dps single target and more when i use HB over OB for instances. In instances you can also swing Pestilence instead of BS to take advantage of the x2 damage with HB and also slow the mobs by 20% (swing speed).

I'm currently shooting for 23/48, but you don't want DRM from the blood tree for any reason because it blows up your rotation because death runes get used in the complete wrong order.

Does anyone have any sound advice on how to integrate Empower Rune Weapon? Because whenever I'm open to use it, my runes are already about to repop anyways or starting my rotation. Should I just use it directly after my 2nd OB and do 2 more OB? That would easily max out your RP, which would set you up for 3 FS, although your entire rotation is behind schedule but do you net a dps increase? It definately seems more useful for tanking where you D&D + HB then refresh and spread IT with Pest afterwards.

 

Vonwen

Can DKs learn 2h maces ? If so I'd like to know how, if not I seriously doubt the previous post regarding frost dps. Plus the fact that haste is not that useful (if useful at all) for us. And I manage to get a consistent 1500 dps at lvl 75 with a 110 dps weapon, so I guess something is wrong here.

 

Solithaira

Yes DK's can learn 2h Maces.

Haste might be useful for Frost thanks to killing machine, although I would imagine that you would need to rack up a large amount of crit before haste starts scaling.

 

Kalevi

I am curious as to why most people seem to prefer Obliterate over Howling Blast. I know Obliterate gains about 27% ( I think) chance to crit from talents and another 5% from the T7 2pc bonus but from the past couple raids, Howling Blast seems to outperform Obliterate.

Granted at that time I was using [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver] and did not have [Sigil of Awareness] from Naxx, it seemed Howling Blast was the better choice. I think at most I missed two HB's on a boss but each one would hit 1000-1200 higher than Obliterate. Other than the chance to miss if not spell hit capped as Frost, I currently favor HB even on single target fights.

Here's the WWS from our first 25 man raid as a guild: WWS

It only logged two fights out of probably 9 or so but Loatheb should be a good measure of single target DPS even with the spore buff. Also keep in mind the gear level varies drastically from person to person as quite a few people just recently hit 80. At that time I was rocking 3/5 T7 thanks to heroics and a Naxx 10 clear beforehand, sitting at about 2900 AP/27% Crit/Hit capped and using the axe from Heroic HoL. I also have the [Glyph of Obliterate]

My general rotation on bosses was:
PS > IT > BS > BS > HB > FS dump
PS > IT > Obl > HB > FS dump

I would use Obliterate in place of HB for Rime procs and then use HB during the FS part. I would end up using HB twice per rotation (~20 seconds) regardless. I saw Rime procs as a way to get in an extra Obliterate rather than an extra HB.

We also had a Boomkin so my magic damage was as buffed as it could get which might be the reason HB did so well compared to Obliterate.

Last night I got [Death's Bite] (Hooray!) and I was able to replace quite a few +Hit gems with pure +Str so I gained quite a bit of raw weapon damage. I'm guessing my Obliterates will hit significantly harder but I don't know if its enough to warrant it's use over HB at this point.

Is my logic wrong in doing so?

I also would like to know if anyone has tried out a 10/54/7 Frost spec. I've seen it thrown around a few places with people claiming it does more DPS than a standard 17/54 Frost build but they did not give A) Rotation to go along with the spec or B) DPS reports of any kind, just their opinion.

I'm also curious if anyone has used Cinderglacier instead of Fallen Crusader as Frost or compared them. I know I tried it a week or so ago and found Fallen Crusader to net more DPS but I'm not too confident in my testing.

 

• Zurm

Does your group not have sunder/farie fire? The reason why obliterate is prefered is because with raid buffs and debuffs, it SHOULD be hitting significantly harder. Not to mention it has a higher crit rate than HB (spell versus melee, this is always the case for a DK) and crits for 245% damage instead of 200%.

 

Kalevi

I am not sure about FF but I'm almost positive the bosses were sundered in most cases...although now that I think about it, our MT is usually a Feral Druid. I'll have to pay attention to all the debuffs next raid to see if our warriors are sundering the boss and if our druid is using FF, my guess would be they are since most of them know what they are doing but who knows.

 

Andread

You're right that oblit should be hitting harder than HB, there's math already in this thread. However, you're wrong that HB crits for only 200% - the same talent that makes OB crit for an extra 45% affects HB.

 

Prag

These are two points I'm also very curious about. When I try to think it out, though, I usually end up boiling it down to a 6-second increase in diseases, after spending 5 relatively useless points, coming out way behind 5% increased Crit and 4% increased 2H damage.

As for Cinderglacier... I've seen a fair mix of Armories for Frost-DPS Naxx25 players, and it seems like an even split between which they're using.

Great points, though. I'd love to see more info/tests on both.

 

• Zurm

Ah, my mistake.

I DO notice that HB hits harder when say, I'm attacking the Ebon Hold raid boss dummy with just self-buffs. But in a raiding environment, I can't imagine HB ever hitting harder. That was my point, sorry I misspoke.

 

EwokChilli

Looking at his WoW Web Stats, Frost Strike was critting 70% of the time? Howling Blast critting 67% of the time? Oblit only critting 73% of the time? I know that Rampage and Leader of the pack are good and Oblit can get up to 32% chance to crit from talents, but how about the rest of those?

 

Gholl

Hate to be so brief in such a thread rife with calculations . But hasn't any dps raiding DK out there yet done a full naxx run as frost and a full naxx run as unholy to figure this stuff out?

I haven't tested unholy myself yet, but I'm not giving up on frost yet, the lack of interest is just a bit concerning.

 

Hraka

Looking at the Loatheb fight only 5 sunders were registered for the entire 7 minutes so you definitely werent running with it up all the time for an additional 3925 armor on the boss at most times. In this case I'd definitely figure HB would do some more dmg than OB but your numbers are quite suprising. Will definitely be looking forward to future numbers with your new weapon/gear.

Edit: Bollocks.
Yep, only caught the 2 fury warriors not the 2 prot warriors in the raid so figured that there wouldnt be a devastate present. Ignore above.

 

Kalevi

The high crit % comes from the Loatheb fight where you get a buff after killing a spore that increases chance to crit by 50% for 2 minutes I believe. If you check that fight, you'll see Obliterate having an insane crit rate, something like 95%because of that buff. I'm not sure if its listed in WWS or what it would be listed as under the buffs/debuffs gained. Raid buffed my crit was close to 35%, so even without Loatheb, my Obliterate would have about a 65%-70% chance to crit.

 

Kalevi

That is unfortunate if only 5 were applied over the entire fight. Maybe it's possible WWS only counts each stack as a separate application? I doubt it since just about everything else has multiple times being applied to the boss such as Heart of the Crusader, which I'm positive would have 100% uptime with 2 Ret Paladins in the raid. I'll have to make sure to mention something to our warriors next raid

 

Melchior

I think that is normal, as Devastate refreshes the Sunder stack, so it likely never fell off.

 

Roywyn

Razorice increases frost damage taken by all sources and stacks with everything.

So, any raid with 2 mages or more and a desire to maximise raid DPS will have a Death Knight with Razorice since it increases mage damage by about 4%.
That's for Frostfire mages of course, no one runs anything else for DPS.
Obviously, Frost would gain 5% and Fire 0% if you include those specs into your raid for whichever obscure reason.

The proc also goes up pretty quickly on bosses. It's not very reliable when you're just AEing all thrash though.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Xenoe

I've been scanning these forums and noticed my spec is vastly different then most of your specs for raiding, and I don't understand why. If you're going to go frost dps, then it seems like you should be dual wielding and relying more on howling blast for your main damage. Am I mistaken in using this spec?

Frost 44/27


I generally average 2100 dps in shitty gear doing my shitty 10 mans, but I can only assume that my dps will significantly increase with better AP. Since HB/FS/IT are all spell based damage, shouldn't this increase your DPS better then dipping into blood? Gargoyle is a great RP dump as well as having the benefit of the ghoul.

The reason I dual wield this is because of constant weapon procs for cinderglacier, fallen crusader, killing machine, and rime.

Any thoughts?

 

Solithaira

There is a separate thread on these forums discussing tri-spec DPS. This spec maximizes white damage while DW and focuses on some deep Frost talents for hard hits. You'll probably find more information relating to your spec over there. This thread is primarily about 2H Frost DPS and as such your build would not be very viable.

 

Xenoe

Yes, I'm aware of this, but the nature of frost is not to use 2handers, it's to dual wield, as it relies heavily on weapon procs and even the rune forges specialized for frost are weapon procs.

This isn't a 2hander frost dps threat from the title, it's a frost dps thread so I don't see how this is out of place.

 

Solithaira

I disagree that a frost spec is inclined towards DW. Deep frost specs obtain most of their damage from Frost Strike and Obliterate. Both of these abilities benefit most from a hard hitting 2-hander, and from what I have read you would not see any type of DPS gain from DW in a deep frost spec. This is not to say that DW is not viable, simply to suggest that a deep frost spec would not DW.

On a side...my comment regarding the other thread was a direct reply to your question of why your spec was "vastly different" from most of the specs in this thread. I said nothing about whether or not your post was relevant.