Hmm, thanks for the fast responses. I was unimpressed by the IT-BS-OB-OB rotation about two weeks ago, but since then I've gotten quite a few new pieces of gear (about 800 AP or so). I'll go practice the rotation on some dummies and try to run it in tonight's naxx-25.
I've hit up the dummies to try out some 2h dps rotations and provide my numbers & opinions on them.
Yes - before anyone starts, I know physical vs spells on a dummy isn't a fair comparison. My suspisions are that the IT BS OB OB rotation when paired with the Sigil of Awareness may begin to outscale all the others. Pity, I really dislike that one.
BS BS OB OB -> IT IT IT IT IT IT
Unholy pres: 3000.
I didn't like this one. There was far too much of a 'low dps, high dps' rotation switch feeling. I had way too much runic power coming in all at once which lead to wasted frost strikes, and if Rime procced I had to save it for after the Obliterates, which lead to even more wasted Frost Strikes. Not even Unholy presence is quick enough for this one in my opinion.
As a side note, Jan, I believe in post #779 you asked the exact same question you just slammed me for.
You're doing that one wrong. I call it ITx6, but you aren't actually supposed to do 6 ITs in a row, there's no way to not cap RP. It's really more like "IT,IT,FS,OB,FS,FS,OB,FS - BS,BS,FS,IT,IT,FS,IT,IT,IT. - you want to split up the ITs, and you toss in FS in between them (optimally after KM procs, but that can get difficult). In fact, if it still feels unbalanced, you can split up the Obliterates too. IT,BS,OB,FS,FS,IT,IT,FS,(HB) - BS,IT,IT,IT,FS,OB,FS,FS,FS is probably more standard-looking to you, it's just not as obvious to most people where all the death runes are at. I guess I should really call it a BotN/DRM build.. ITx6 just sounds cooler :-)
My 'question' in post #779 was actually an assertion that I was asking for verification on - I had a rotation that I could find no reference to that performed unusually well on the spreadsheet I was working with. After trying to figure out if I was using the spreadsheet wrong, I asked if anyone else who was using a spreadsheet got similar numbers. This is in no way similar to saying "Hey theorycrafters, run a bunch of numbers on the following (extensive) list of topics and post them back, so I don't have to do any work myself." My question was quite specific, and clearly researched first - yours covered almost every topic mentioned in the last 5 weeks of the thread.
Originally Posted by savathras
What's the point in this? Icy Touch boosts Obliterate's damage.
FF will still be up from the rotation before. The point of his variant is to put an Oblit before the middle frost strike, so it would have a higher chance of getting a KM proc.
I have been playing around with some ideas about Unholy-subspec and i actually found something that Feorthas Spreadsheet gives me higher DPS than standart 21/50/0.
I get with my Gear (4xT7) and the IT Glyph 3 FS at each dump.
The problem i see is that i can't fit the last FS into the frostfever duration and i dont realy have free gcds for rime.
Quick dummy-test shows me about the same DPS than 21/50/0 with IT - BS - FS - OB - FS - OB - FS.
I can manage to hold both at around 3-3.1k DPS on the heroic dummy with 0 HP, couldn't find a dummy with full hp that fast, but i think i doen't really make a big difference.(everything in BPr, no Ghoul used)
I thought deep-frost would really benefit a lot more from blood-subspec so i am a litte confused now.
Maybe someone can run another Spreadsheet or show me if i made seriouse mistakes so far...
FF will still be up from the rotation before. The point of his variant is to put an Oblit before the middle frost strike, so it would have a higher chance of getting a KM proc.
In addition this variant uses the death rune for Icy Touch only (and strikes obliterates only with frost/unholy runes).
The "more standart" version IT-BS-Oblit-Oblit uses a frost rune for Icy Touch and the death rune instead for Obliterate.
Because the death and blood rune are switching positions in terms of when they come from cooldown you will every now and then have to wait up to 2.5 seconds before the necessary death rune for your next obliterate is active again (sitting on unholy and blood rune as active runes instead of the necessary unholy and death).
I have been playing around with some ideas about Unholy-subspec and i actually found something that Feorthas Spreadsheet gives me higher DPS than standart 21/50/0.
I get with my Gear (4xT7) and the IT Glyph 3 FS at each dump.
The problem i see is that i can't fit the last FS into the frostfever duration and i dont realy have free gcds for rime.
Quick dummy-test shows me about the same DPS than 21/50/0 with IT - BS - FS - OB - FS - OB - FS.
I can manage to hold both at around 3-3.1k DPS on the heroic dummy with 0 HP, couldn't find a dummy with full hp that fast, but i think i doen't really make a big difference.(everything in BPr, no Ghoul used)
I thought deep-frost would really benefit a lot more from blood-subspec so i am a litte confused now.
Maybe someone can run another Spreadsheet or show me if i made seriouse mistakes so far...
There is a similar rotaion being "discussed," and I use the term lightly, on the WOW forums. Using a standard 2h frost spec, the rotation would go:
PS>IT>OB>BS>BS>FS>FS>FS>OB>
PS>IT>OB>OB>FS>FS>FS
I know conventional wisdom says that a PSless rotation is best, and this one seems very similar to the original rotation, except you seem to get an extra obliterate in there. I'm going to give this rotaion a try tonight and see how it works out. I'll post some before and after WWS reports at the end of the night. Assuming we do either Patch or Widow tonight that is, though we should get to at least one of them. 3 hour raid schedule FTL.
There is a similar rotaion being "discussed," and I use the term lightly, on the WOW forums. Using a standard 2h frost spec, the rotation would go:
PS>IT>OB>BS>BS>FS>FS>FS>OB>
PS>IT>OB>OB>FS>FS>FS
I know conventional wisdom says that a PSless rotation is best, and this one seems very similar to the original rotation, except you seem to get an extra obliterate in there. I'm going to give this rotaion a try tonight and see how it works out. I'll post some before and after WWS reports at the end of the night. Assuming we do either Patch or Widow tonight that is, though we should get to at least one of them. 3 hour raid schedule FTL.
Where're the extra two runes coming from? I see 'OB>PS>IT>OB>OB, which is 8 runes in 5 gcds.. If we get to use imaginary runes, I propose the Janraea rotation - PS,IT,OB,OB,OB,OB - OB,OB,OB,OB,OB,FS as optimal.
Yeah, it looks like perma ghoul and the additional white damage procs outweigh deep Frost *and* scale faster; I just didn't want to upload the latest sheet until I was 100% certain that something wasn't completely out of whack.
I have some final tweaks to make to the ghoul calculations but should have it up this afternoon, give or take.
I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.
My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.
Where're the extra two runes coming from? I see 'OB>PS>IT>OB>OB, which is 8 runes in 5 gcds.. If we get to use imaginary runes, I propose the Janraea rotation - PS,IT,OB,OB,OB,OB - OB,OB,OB,OB,OB,FS as optimal.
Hmm.. I didn't do a work through to see if all the runes were there, but I didn't seem to have trouble running it on a training dummy. Perhaps I'm just adjusting on the fly and not reallizing.
EDIT: It seemed like my runes were refreshing in time to get this to work. Although as stated above, I may have been throwing FS's in there while waiting for them to refresh. Didn't say it was a better rotation, just thought it was interesting. Produced very similar results on a dummy (for me anyway) and thought I'd see how it worked out with raid buffs.
I have been playing around with some ideas about Unholy-subspec and i actually found something that Feorthas Spreadsheet gives me higher DPS than standart 21/50/0.
I get with my Gear (4xT7) and the IT Glyph 3 FS at each dump.
The problem i see is that i can't fit the last FS into the frostfever duration and i dont realy have free gcds for rime.
That's pretty much the basic idea on why to not add PS into the rotation. Without Epidemic you only have 8 GCD to fill between your Icy Touches (in Blood Presence). PS is just not worth spending a GCD for if you are able to use it for Obliterate instead (taken into account PS damage as well as it's effect und BS and Obliterate).
Yeah, it looks like perma ghoul and the additional white damage procs outweigh deep Frost *and* scale faster; I just didn't want to upload the latest sheet until I was 100% certain that something wasn't completely out of whack.
I have some final tweaks to make to the ghoul calculations but should have it up this afternoon, give or take.
And outweights all the blood talents as well? I still find that hard to believe. Looking forward to your calculations.
There is a similar rotaion being "discussed," and I use the term lightly, on the WOW forums. Using a standard 2h frost spec, the rotation would go:
PS>IT>OB>BS>BS>FS>FS>FS>OB>
PS>IT>OB>OB>FS>FS>FS
I know conventional wisdom says that a PSless rotation is best, and this one seems very similar to the original rotation, except you seem to get an extra obliterate in there. I'm going to give this rotaion a try tonight and see how it works out. I'll post some before and after WWS reports at the end of the night. Assuming we do either Patch or Widow tonight that is, though we should get to at least one of them. 3 hour raid schedule FTL.
If I'm thinking about the same thread, I believe that poster was proposing presumed 2/2 in Epidemic for the extra disease duration, which is how the rotation gets so long.
I reasonably sure we've hashed this out before, and that the rotations allowed by the longer disease rotation aren't worth two points in epidemic, and 5 points of mostly filler in vicious strikes/morbidity required to use them.
And outweights all the blood talents as well? I still find that hard to believe. Looking forward to your calculations.
Yeah, like I said, I wanted to make sure that nothing was out of whack. The best confirmation I got was comparing against a Naxx25 parse from the week before last; all of the predicted ability damage was within +/-5% of actual--and my AP has changed only slightly between now and then--so I'm pronouncing it "working" to the best of my knowledge.
So, yeah. I'm going to get a "welcome" sheet together and post it once I have a few seconds.
I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.
My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.
@savathas
My starter rotation is IT OB BS BS (UA macro) Dump
After that, i put the OB before the IT and the BS so that I don't ever push back my rune refreshes. You can always get OB OB (IT BS) to refresh in the correct sequence, whereas with IT OB BS OB, you'll slowly push back your last OB over the coarse of the fight.
As for the 3/50/18 spec, if white damage is ~25% of our dps, then BcB is worth about 2.6% dps for 3 points. Necrosis is worth 5% dps for 5 points. In blood bladed armor gives you 5 AP per 180 armor, which in my last raid i had 18000 armor while in Blood, so that was 500 AP, and 2H spec is 4% to everything except IT, so probably worth 3.5% for 2 points. Unless you have SO MUCH AP that 500 AP is worth < 5% dps bonus, I don't see how the math makes Unholy even close to competing with Blood. As for the other 10 points, you're getting +6 seconds on diseases, which is moot unless you're using PS, 6% crit to PS, which is moot unless you're using old PS rotation, and 3% strength (and 60% str to ghoul), for 2% str 2 exp, 5% crit, and a 16% heal every 40 seconds.
The only way I see unholy keeping pace with those 18 points is if there is an overinflated value for the amount of melee damage, they're applying Necrosis and/or BcB to strikes, or they're assuming 100% uptime for ghoul (non-permanent ghoul). Even so, a 11/50/10 should have a higher return (assuming 70-100% non-permanent ghoul uptime).
If I'm thinking about the same thread, I believe that poster was proposing presumed 2/2 in Epidemic for the extra disease duration, which is how the rotation gets so long.
I reasonably sure we've hashed this out before, and that the rotations allowed by the longer disease rotation aren't worth two points in epidemic, and 5 points of mostly filler in vicious strikes/morbidity required to use them.
Well, the OP of this rotation, misguided as he may be, has proposed using Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft as a DPS spec. Personally I would NEVER advocate this spec, and I use 21/50 for raiding. Like I said, not totally sure about this rotation, or even if its possible. I just like investigating new rotations personally. Despite having what I would consider a pretty decent set of gear, and having the IT>OB>OB>BS>DUMP rotaion down pat, I still can't seem to get much above 4500 DPS. I've seen some reports of people reaching a fair bit higher with 2hFrost and I'm always looking for ways to crank it up a little. Plus you guys are so good at pulling things apart and examining all the little nuances, I'd thought I'd see what you all thought of it.
@savathas
My starter rotation is IT OB BS BS (UA macro) Dump
After that, i put the OB before the IT and the BS so that I don't ever push back my rune refreshes. You can always get OB OB (IT BS) to refresh in the correct sequence, whereas with IT OB BS OB, you'll slowly push back your last OB over the coarse of the fight.
As for the 3/50/18 spec, if white damage is ~25% of our dps, then BcB is worth about 2.6% dps for 3 points. Necrosis is worth 5% dps for 5 points. In blood bladed armor gives you 5 AP per 180 armor, which in my last raid i had 18000 armor while in Blood, so that was 500 AP, and 2H spec is 4% to everything except IT, so probably worth 3.5% for 2 points. Unless you have SO MUCH AP that 500 AP is worth < 5% dps bonus, I don't see how the math makes Unholy even close to competing with Blood. As for the other 10 points, you're getting +6 seconds on diseases, which is moot unless you're using PS, 6% crit to PS, which is moot unless you're using old PS rotation, and 3% strength (and 60% str to ghoul), for 2% str 2 exp, 5% crit, and a 16% heal every 40 seconds.
The only way I see unholy keeping pace with those 18 points is if there is an overinflated value for the amount of melee damage, they're applying Necrosis and/or BcB to strikes, or they're assuming 100% uptime for ghoul (non-permanent ghoul). Even so, a 11/50/10 should have a higher return (assuming 70-100% non-permanent ghoul uptime).
Exactly; however, perma ghoul is retarded-good.
Methinks frost and unholy need some talents moved around; perma ghoul merits 31pts and BotN merits 45-50 rather than TS (but should contribute more).
I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.
My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.
I've had trouble keeping my summoned ghoul alive, without NotD avoidance, i'd imagine that perma ghoul would die just as much. A summoned ghoul gets 2 minutes of life out of every 5, which is pretty similar to the life of a permaghoul without avoidance. Or am I missing something?
@savathas
My starter rotation is IT OB BS BS (UA macro) Dump
After that, i put the OB before the IT and the BS so that I don't ever push back my rune refreshes. You can always get OB OB (IT BS) to refresh in the correct sequence, whereas with IT OB BS OB, you'll slowly push back your last OB over the coarse of the fight.
As for the first thing.
Do you find it easier to start with IT OB BS BS (which is actually a pretty neat starter which i didnt even think of. Because why don't you start with a blood tap and then just roll right into the correct rotation of OB OB IT BS
Also for the second part, is that really true.
Runes refresh faster if they are unused for a few seconds.
So say you would use the IT OB BS OB // IT OB OB BS rotation, and you'd use the first BS at second X you should get something like:
(Ignoring IT OB part for a bit here since that is "static")
Attack - Second - Refresh time
BS - X - 10 seconds
OB - X+1.5 - 10/10 seconds (death / unholy rune)
---
OB - X+11.5 - 8.5 / 10 seconds (death / unholy)
BS - X+13 - 8.5 seconds
---
BS - X+20 - 10 seconds
OB - X+21.5 - 10/10 seconds
You see whenever a rune is waiting for a while it will refresh faster.
I've had trouble keeping my summoned ghoul alive, without NotD avoidance, i'd imagine that perma ghoul would die just as much. A summoned ghoul gets 2 minutes of life out of every 5, which is pretty similar to the life of a permaghoul without avoidance. Or am I missing something?
See, now that's an intangible that a spreadsheet really can't take into consideration. With fragile-perma-ghoul, you end up doing 200+ more dps than Frost/Blood; however, you do 100, or more, dps less without him. He's probably a DPS boost on fights with random, massive AoE (so, Sapph bad--Heigan ok, maybe, KT ok, maybe (depends on how much CH/CoH/WG he eats)--Patch goooooooood) but there's no way of knowing how that'll work out in the future.
I guess it'll turn out to do about the same amount of damage, with potential for more, but it all depends on how much you can protect your pet.
You know, with creative use of macros, you could probably do a decent job until things got absolutely crazy--bind stuff like huddle to lesser used strikes like Death Strike, etc. Now I really, really want to get a G13 and see if the extra buttons (vs my N52) would help with that......
Last edited by Feorthas : 01/28/09 at 3:57 AM.
I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.
My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.
You know, with creative use of macros, you could probably do a decent job until things got absolutely crazy--bind stuff like huddle to lesser used strikes like Death Strike, etc. Now I really, really want to get a G13 and see if the extra buttons (vs my N52) would help with that......
Yeah, I've raided as 17/0/54 (pre-3.0.8) and 0/44/27, and in both cases, I needed to do a lot of pet micromanaging in order to have a chance to keep him alive. Keeping him on passive, and using easy-to-hit macros to /petfollow and /petattack for sure. Hadn't thought about using huddle to stay alive, though. Heh, that's one of the main reasons I decided to spec frost - keeping an eye on my ghoul was too much work, and when he dies, there goes your DPS. The fire-and-forget nature of raise dead, especially now that you can glyph it to be free, makes it much less of a disappointment when he does die.
But I do buy that he can be a big boon to your DPS. They do a surprising amount of damage.
with 21/50 we don't have permaghoul, however so far I've kept the Ghoul Glyph since now he doesn't require ar eagent cost I pop him whenever I feel like it (he's about a 200 DPS boost at times) However I was wondering, since the spec uses Obliterate twice, would it be to my advantage to just use Glyph of Obliterate? I'll still pop the ghoul of course.
Also, I've searched through the thread but I'm not finding 44/27 2handed frost specs/numbers. I don't have a spreadsheet to mess with it (was hoping someone did that already) Anyone got WWS/just pics even of 44/27 2hander DPS compared to 21/50?
EDIT: Another thread sort of answered my question but seems it was just a lone wolf who is using the spec at the moment X.x
Given that 21/50/0 and 17/0/54 does comparable dps (I would say) one of the reasons people are specing Frost is because they want to escape pet babysitting.
Ghoul without NotD is quite useless and annoying. Sure it works on dummy and Patchwerk but is that the point?
@Foxx
Yes, i could just BT before and do my normal rotation, but then i have to wait a full minute to pop UA, since i'm not going to mess up my rotation for it. And the only reason i don't do IT PS OB BS BS as my first rotation is because I don't have PS on my hotbar. Also, with enough RP to do a billion FS, you don't have to worry about your rune refreshing, because they will all have or be really close to refreshing by the time you're done dumping. Once I have 4 piece T7, i'll probably switch to the IT BS FS OB FS OB FS rotation.
Me and another DK in my raid both went as 2h frost tonight (another was unholy). Overall our DPS was pretty solid, but I was curious about the icy touch sigil possibly affecting frost strike? Our gear is pretty similar but mine is slightly stronger overall, our specs were the same, but his frost strikes were hitting for 300 more on avg, 300 more as lowest hit and ~600 more as highest crit. I am not completely sure what was causing this if not the sigil (our specs were the same, 21/50/0, although my armory shows me as my sarth tank spec right now). The rotation I was using was IT > OB > OB > BS > FS dump (sometimes I would weave a FS for KM proc) and was able to keep that rotation going the whole time by starting with a blood tap to start with 1 death rune.
Are you sure he didn't have some extra str or ap on his gear somewhere?
Something interesting I noticed, but haven't been able to fully test yet(only tested this stuff on the heroic dummy so far). The other night I respecced/reglyphed unholy to try upping my dps(17/0/54 cookie cutter build, went to that from 17/54/0). Noticed an overall decrease by a large amount at first, before realizing I forgot to put garg on my bar(first time as unholy, can you tell?).
After retesting with bone shield, HoW, using the proper rotation and popping UB/garg, my dps was STILL lower by comparison(topped out slightly above 2300). So, I decided to respec(21/50/0)/reglyph again and try out Ewokchili's rotation. This time I found my dps spiking at about 2800(possibly more), and settling into a range from 2500-2600+.
Maybe this is nothing of particular note, I just keep hearing about how unholy does overall better dps than frost. Not that I'll be upset if frost turns out better. I hate the idea of pets doing most of the work for me anyway.
01/27/09, 12:41 PM
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