Maahk

Another WWS. I picked up a couple new pieces of gear, though. For this WWS I used Fallen Crusader and used the new rotation unless something else was going on of course (AOE packs, etc.)

Wow Web Stats

This parse is missing some of the fights we did, and including the missing fights Akane out-damaged me overall, but it's pretty clear that things are improving. It's possible that Frost is just highly gear-dependent while Unholy is less so due to extra pet damage and spells bypassing mob armor.

I plan on finishing the week as normal, but am toying with doing next week as blood to see how they compare. It's hard to say with everyone getting upgrades all the time still how things stack up exactly.

 

Hraka

I have definitely noticed similar comparisons between myself and the Unholy DK in my guild. Whenever he cant use his ghoul for w/e reason I outdps him every time but whenever that bag of bones it is impossible for me to match his numbers. It definitely seems like blizzard screwed up quite largely in their balancing of these specs... Currently Unholy is looking to be the best leveling spec, the best DPS spec, the best Tank spec and possibly the best PVP spec.

Since at this point it seems like we're actually getting to the point of answering a lllot of questions about the specifics of the Frost spec I think we're not too far off from the point of being able to do straight up mathematical comparisons between the 4 optimal spec builds (blood/frost/unholy/DW). All in all I'd be perfectly fine with Unholy ending up being the best spec for everything or if blood ends up scaling best then unholy being best spec for 3/4 game play dynamics but they need to fix Ebon plague stacking. Its ridiculous if Blizzard produced these three trees to all be competitive dps then only one tree ends up being the dps tree and Blizzard makes it harmful to have more than one of these in the raid.

 

Bordon

Actually, according to what I saw on MMO-champion, they've confirmed that they are looking into the stacking of Ebon Plaguebringer so unholy DKs don't have to worry about competing for that debuff. It will probably be whenever they implement the other DK changes they've been discussing.

EDIT: Added a link to the post talking about it. Maybe the change wont get fixed as soon as I thought, but they're acknowledging it.

 

Orlgin

Some of you will remember me from trying to advance Duel-Wielding. While doing this, I came up with a rotation for it that used Unholy Presence. As it turns out, this rotation works best using a two-hander because of all the frost strikes. I've heard complaints in this thread that they can't use all their GCDs and end up waiting for rune cooldowns. This is how you do it.

The spec used for this is 0/50/21 with one point in Dirge. You must have the Icy Touch and Raise Dead glyph.

You open with Blood Tap and summon your Ghoul for the 20 runic power. Start your rotation.

IT(25) -> PS(12.5) -> IT(25) -> IT(25) -> FS(-40) -> BS(10) -> PS(12.5) -> FS(-40) -> FS(-40)
IT(25) -> PS(12.5) -> IT(25) -> BS(10) -> FS(-40) -> IT(25) -> PS(12.5) -> FS(-40) -> FS(-40)

Now the wild card in all this is Rime powered Howling Blast. After testing, I determined that a Rime powered Howling Blast produces 5 Runic power (Chill to the Grave). When used instead of a FS, this produces a net savings of 45 runic power.

As most of you have determined, this twenty second rotation is short 15 runic power. This is where that net savings of 45 runic power comes in. Assuming you don't go over the runic power limit, every Rime powered Howling Blast in place of a Frost Strike sustains your rotation for another 60 seconds. As you cast 3 Icy Touch every 10 seconds, barring some horrible luck, you should easily be able to sustain your rotation indefinitely.

That's all there is to it. Everytime Rime procs, replace the Frost Strike that is in the rotation. Don't worry about going over the runic power limit this way. Just do it everytime. I found altering your rotation isn't really necessary. Keeping runic power topped off is good enough without getting greedy and going for 10 abilities in 10 seconds. If you like a challenge, you can try the dynamic rotation (so you don't waste any runic power) but it tends to make it harder to concentrate on the challenges in hand (stay out of the damn fire!).

I'll give an example:

Your first IT procs Rime, you lucky guy. Here is what happens:

IT(25) -> PS(10) -> IT(25) -> IT(25) -> HB(5). At this point, you go to the full 110 runic power. For those who like a dynamic rotation, you fire Frost Strike. A fixed rotation just continues:

BS(10) -> PS(12.5) -> FS(-40) -> FS(-40) which leaves you with 30 runic power at the end of the first rotation. The Howling Blast netted you 25 runic power which means you have 30 more seconds for a Howling Blast to go off to maintain your rotation.

Now some of you will tell me that with morbidity, you can start with almost a full runic bar. This is somewhat true. You need to get runic power maxxed and spam D&D every chance you get OoC. However, Blizzard intends to fix this somewhat soon as GC has stated this was unintended behavior.

For those who like the dynamic rotation, it will produce more DPS if you can pull it off. You can easily squeeze in extra GCDs and use the 2 second rule to your advantage. If you screw up though, you will lose DPS. Hesitation for even a second over which strike is next costs you a strike as you must be doing something virtually every single second.

For those who prefer Blood, you can use Butchery to gain 2 runic power per 5 seconds. However, if Rime fails to proc in the first 6 tries (33% chance), you will have a 8 move rotation because you'll be short of runic power for the last frost strike (1 damn point to be exact). If you have runic power when you begin the boss, you can likely last until the first Rime proc. It's a bit more gambling (you produce 3 less runic power every 10 seconds) but the odds do favor you in theory (you need to get a rime proc every 9 ITs).

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Hraka

It looks like it could be a somewhat viable rotation for DWing however with a 2hander you run into some problems.

First of all you're losing out on 15% damage on all of the abilities you're casting in order to fit in all the abilities. In order for this to be worth it you'd have to be substituting in abilities that do over 15% dmg than the ones you're replacing. In your rotation you're substituting 4 ITs, 4 PSs, and 2 FS all running at 87% efficiency along with 87% dmg BSs for 4 Obliterates running at full efficiency (115% dmg).

This might not be a huge loss for DWs who's spells would count for higher dmg than their weapon strikes but with average numbers for a 2hander wielding DKs your rotation substitutions end up being 97% of the dmg of the 4 obliterates you dropped outta the rotation BEFORE you factor in the 13% loss in the dmg of each of those strikes from not using Blood Presence.

Edit: This is also not factoring in the massive dps loss you incur from losing 2H weapon spec, Bladed Armor, Dark Conviction and Subversion.

 

Orlgin

How are you getting 4 Obliterates in a Frost Rotation with 17 points in Blood?

This is the expected rotation:

IT -> PS -> BS -> BS -> OB -> FS
IT -> PS -> OB -> OB -> FS

Now if you specced into Unholy to get Epidemic, I could see this on the second line:

OB -> OB -> OB -> FS

But you clearly stated you were counting the blood talents.

The sigil is what makes Obliterate really powerful. The fact it adds it's damage to the base amount which then gets the 145+6% critical damage bonus is the main reason people go for Obliterate.

This is the reason I need quantity. I need three of my moves to beat two of yours. Lucky for me, I produce 18 moves in 20 seconds and you produce 11. So in a contest of quality over quantity, who wins?

Let's assume for a moment that we use the exact same spec (17/54/0) but use different rotations and presence.

Now some comparisons are easy to judge and so I'll list them:

3 Icy Touch of mine will outdamage 2 Icy Touch of yours (261% efficiency vs 230%)
3 Plague Strikes of mine will outdamage 2 Plague Strikes of yours (261 vs 230)
3 Frost Strikes of mine will outdamage 2 Frost Strikes of yours (261 vs 230)

Now for tougher comparison, you must judge if 3 IT, 2 BS, 1 PS and 3 FT outdamage 2 Blood Strike and 3 Obliterate.

It's safe to say that one Icy Touch + 2 Blood Strikes of mine should outdps your two Blood Strikes

So does 2 Icy Touchs, 1 Plague Strike, and 3 Frost Strikes outdamage three Obliterate?

That's tougher because the Sigil is really that good.

But you forgot to add in extra white damage (15% Haste) from Unholy Presence.

So the correct question is can 2 IT, 1 PS, 3 FS, and 15% Haste deal more damage than three Obliterate.

This is what led me to believe that this type of rotation may have potential.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Feorthas

That is no longer the optimal setup, as is noted less than 10 posts above yours (my last post, post 175). The new optimal Frost rotation is:

IT BS OB OB FS DUMP (x2)

Before starting it, you must have the following runes:

BDFFUU

The above requires 2/2 Chill of the Grave, 5/5 Blood of the North, and the Icy Touch glyph (and the Obliterate Glyph, but all Frost builds need that) but scales better than any of the other previous rotations.

 

Orlgin

Ah, I was not up to date. So 1 OB + 1 FS deals more damage than 2xPS, 6 Blood Plague ticks, and the bonus damage on the 2 Blood Strikes and 4 Obliterates. Interesting. With Butchery naturally in the standard frost build, this is really good. My apologies for not keeping up with the thread.

I take it you use the Glyph of Raise Dead to generate 20 runic power so you can start with the correct rotation.

You then wait patiently for Rime Procs and either:

1) Just insert Howling Blast which adds DPS and extends the rotation another 50 seconds by generating 5 runic power.

2) If you have bad luck and are nearly out of runic power, you replace a Frost Strike and net 45 runic power which will last you the entire fight.

Sigil of Awareness is so much better than any other Sigil that it's silly. It makes forcing Obliterate better than keeping one of our two diseases up.

As for spec, I cut 3 points in Runic Power Mastery, two points in Icy Reach, Deathchill, and Lichborne for 3 points in Toughness, Rune Tap, 2 points in improved Rune Tap (emergency button), and added one point in Veteran of the Third War for a 2% Strength boost and 2 Expertise. The ability to self-heal can be a life-saver and it fills the points needed to get to Veteran. While Deathchill offers some DPS, it's not going to add as much DPS as 2% Strength and 2 Expertise will.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

 

thevidon

I have a question about Death Rune Mastery. If you use Obliterate and it uses a Death Rune which is in a blood rune slot - will that rune come back up as a death rune or a blood rune?

 

Nerub

Here is a WWS of our last 25-man Razuvious kill using the no-PS rotation. Older Web Stats are not suited for comparisons due to massive gear upgrades this week. Seem 4k DPS okish for my gear level?

I'll try an Unholy or Blood spec next week for comparison reasons (if our raid setup allows it).

 

Hraka

Nope, DRM only converts Frost or Unholy runes used for Obliterates into death runes meaning you will turn your frost and unholy runes into death runes which you will then use as frost and unholy runes with a net value of: nothing.

I see the benefit of veteran of war would be nice, expertise is always great in a rotation that is designed to hopefully not get dodged on any strikes. I think would be another decent alternative along the lines of what you're describing. I personally would try and avoid dropping lower than 2 points into RPM cause there will definitely be times when you can blast 3 back to back Frost Strikes. And Icy reach is just a personal flavor choice seeing as how easy it is if you have to run out of melee range you can still keep up at least two hits of your next rotation while running back in (IT, HB).

Seeing as how important our frost runes are in our rotations how much of a boost is unbreakable armor? In order to get good use of it without screwing up rotations we'd have to wait for a rime proc and substitute that HB for an OB then burn unbreakable armor but is the loss of one super scaling OB worth a buff that we have to wait on a random proc for?

Edit: and as neat as toughness might seem in conjunction with Bladed Armor with standard gear lvls it amounts to a boost of about 40 -50AP if you spend all 5 talent points into it, only 25-30 AP at 3 talent points.

 

nooneyouknow13

Well, if you didn't use it to set up a rotation, or after it cools down, if you're planning to use Unbreakable Armor for a DPS increase this is what you'd use Blood Tap for. My question on that becomes at what strength level(if any) does using blood Tap for Unbreakable Armor net more damage than say, an extra Icy Touch/Blood Strike.

 

KamiCrazy

I was thinking of doing a similar build as per above, where you get 1 point in Vot3W as well.

However I was thinking of not going down the icy touch branch too much and putting those points into toughness instead.

Whats the comparison of 5% self haste vs 15% armor with bladed armors AP buff? I know haste isn't very useful to frost dk's except for killing machine.

I was thinking of a build along the lines of

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Bordon

Well, I'm not sure where level 80 death knights are in terms of armor, so I'll just go by a level 80 death knight in my guild, who has 13184 armor at the moment.

Without 15%: (13184 / 180) * 5 = 366.2
With 15%: ((13184 * 1.15) / 180 ) * 5 = 421.2

The difference comes out to 55, so with AP = 1.0000 (using the numbers with the front page) we get it with a total value of 55.

For the haste, 32.79 haste rating = 1% haste, and haste is worth .4978 using the first post again.

32.79 * 5 = 163.95 rating
163.95 * .4978 = 81.61

Assuming my math is right, it'd work out with the 5% haste being better

EDIT: Just checked it in a spreadsheet, they tie at 19587, and then putting points into 5/5 toughness wins out

 

Keishi

ive had quite some succes with weaving UA into my rotation. While im not sure if it actually is an increase in dps I'm assuming it is especially when used in conjunction with other cds or procs. I found that if you use UA in the standard IT - OB -BS - OB rotation you can squeeze it in whenever and just substitue a frost strike. My reasoning is that as long as you are using all of your gbcds it should amount to a net increase in dmg (although Im no number cruncher). If you do this, by the time the gbcd of the frost strike is over your frost rune (or death/blood rune) has come off its cd and you can continue with your regular rotation (ob or it or bs) without a hiccup.

I'm not quite sure if you can UA with a death rune succesfully as its late and I'm tired but I'll test it when i have the chance.

 

KamiCrazy

I guess for a tank and spank situation there is no contest then, but I think it highlights just how expensive it is to get improved icy talons.

I mean for a tanking talent to get 2/3 of the same dps increase benefit for only 5/6 of the cost in talent points.
That's not even factoring in the added mobility provided.

With that extra point you could get something like unbreakable armor as well.

 

Bordon

Yeah, I agree in that it is pretty crazy how much you have to spend to get the 5% haste as the buff is overridden if a single enhance shaman drops Windfury. If you spec the normal way with icy talons, you just have to drop lichborne to pick up UA and deep into blood enough to pick up 1/3 Vot3W; without talons you're just able to pick up lichborne. Not a huge difference either way in my opinion (assuming I spec'd right when I was toying around with it)

 

Veala

Here's the best way I've found to use UA. You make a macro that basically says

/cast Unbreakable Armor
/cast Blood Tap

Then at a point in your rotation when the only rune you can activate UA with is one death rune, you use the macro. A fun thing about Blood Tap is that it immediately ends your GCD, so you can instantly do the Obliterate you were going to do anyway using that death rune with virtually no dps loss.

 

seanvo

Hi guys,

Been a reader for some time, and back in my days on the US servers this site was my bible for my enhancement shaman - I love the effort you guys put in to come up with all the useful info.

On to matters at hand though...
I came up with a rotation after reading the various ones here, and then noticed when I came back, that someone else came up with the exact same rotation - so I am not here to take credit for it - I just wanted to add my 2coppers and my reasons for coming up with it.

I tried the initial rotation of:
IT>BS>OB>OB>RP_Dump
IT>OB>BS>OB>RP_Dump (using the 2second rule for the 2nd Unholy rune)
Sadly, the fact that I live in South Africa, this makes that window even smaller - since we're waiting for the GCD to finish within that window - which leaves me with 500ms - (300~400ms) = 100~200ms and unless you're Luke Skywalker, chances are you're gonna miss the occasional gap. But I'm not here to complain about latency - I modified the rotation a little and here it is:
OB>OB>IT>BS>RP_Dump
OB>OB>BS>IT>RP_Dump
Due to the fact that Frost Fever has a 12 second duration, staggering the IT on the death rune works out perfectly, with a 100% uptime (unless an Icy Touch misses)
This rotation is only for boss fights - naturally, so the loss of the Frost Fever benefit for 2 Obliterates is well worth it imo. (The above rotation implies starting with a Blood Tap, if you were wondering).

I am not level 80 yet, just hit 69 last night - I am working towards this build: Frost/Blood - 44/27 it looks promising, but come level80 and when I start to raid, this may well change. All points, with the exception of 5/5 Blade Barrier under Blood, were chosen for dps increases - I started off levelling as Blood, and loved Abomination's Might - sadly it didnt have the uptime I wanted sonce I didnt have Annihilation due to a deep Blood build - This should have a 100% uptime when I hit level 79-80.

So, any comments, compliments or critisism would be helpful Thanks for reading, and I hope I didnt sound like a complete idiot for my first post here :P

 

Etherealsilk

In the testing I did on dummies the above mentioned rotation worked out the best for me. I tried out the standard PS - IT - OB - BS - BS - RP Dump with blood presence and unholy presence and found unholy to be severely lacking. Then I tried out the original rotation posted that dropped PS and found that I couldn't get into a smooth groove and found myself juggling my cd's too much, between wanting to dump RP and not delay my runes any. So then I started using the rotation posted above of OB - OB - IT - BS - RP dump and found it much easier to maintain and much easier to fit in extra RP usage. Using death runes for IT made the rotation much more simplistic for me. The only concern I would have is having IT be resisted which would set you back some. Has anyone else tried out this rotation and if so what are your thoughts and criticisms?

 

thevidon

Using a 21/50/0 build I discovered a rotation in unholy presence that gave me equal dps to the normal (PS removed) rotation of IT -> OB -> OB -> BS -> FSx2 done in blood presence.

Try this in unholy presence:

IT -> IT -> PS -> OB -> BS -> FSx2 (or 3 where possible).

Basically I figured that double icy touches would increase Rime procs, and the extra GCD time would let me get off rime HB's, as well as 2 to 3 frost strikes at the end of the rotation (depending on runic power). You can easily get off a howling blast and then frost strike three times and pick up your rotation without missing a beat. Just add in free HB's at the end of the rotation when they proc and do as many frost strikes as you can each time.

If anyone else could go try this out and see how their numbers come in that would be great. I spent like an hour on a target dummy making sure the DPS was really the same as my normal rotation, and they were withing like 10 DPS of each other. I'd be curious to see how the numbers are for people with better gear. The added haste added a lot of killing machine procs, and makes me think that haste may not be as bad a stat for frost as everyone makes it out to be.....

 

Sedith

My personal experience recently testing Frost vs Unholy/Blood back to back in my new gear has been quite surprising.

I included testing the three runes when I blew a few hundred gold on the Ebon Hold training dummy. I've done extensive testing at all my gear levels at 80 and trying IT>OB>OB>BS>RPDump a few days ago is the first time I've seen frost be competitive against blood and unholy for personal dps.

The cleanest most consistent run was 2788dps over 5 minutes (only buff as HoW), factoring in that the dummy was already at 1hp realistic numbers should be around ~2730dps) which is pretty much almost exactly what I get as Unholy and Blood if you remove the damage taken from Hysteria that gets measured on Recount. I found most people who are seeing Unholy as superior to blood are actually testing on the dummies in Orgrimmar and benefiting from Wandering Plague and Unholy Blight on 3 targets :S.

The PS>IT> rotation on the other hand seems to net me ~15% less dps and at lower gear levels frost was significantly behind. (Used to struggle to stay over 2k dps on the same training dummy while blood and unholy would do 2300+ consistantly)

Cinderglacier was noticeably lower dps than both Razorice and fallen crusader. Realistically it's going to proc on Icy Touch quite often and at best it's a 20% increase on your last two Frost Strikes where Razorice is 5% on your Frost Strikes, Icy Touch, your Howling Blasts and 2.05% bonus white damage (while almost negligible the debuff appears to effect the Razorfrost proc damage as well).

Fallen crusader numbers were just too close to really say anything over 5 minute runs. Considering in raid situations most buffs are to AP, not strength so even if fallen crusader is superior by an amount so small I can't measure, for personal dps alone I don't see how Razorice can be behind by any significant amount. The fact we bring 3-5 frostfire mages every raid definitely seals the deal on Razorice for me as it's an additional 400-800+ raid dps right there depending on the fight and raid composition.

 

kurokaze

Thevidon:

Interesting, and while my brief testing has a bit less DPS with your method than with the no-PS method, I think there's room for improvement in an IT-centric rotation that might push it forward.

The big thing I noticed testing your rotation is that Fog procs would often overlap. I think the rotation can be modified in such a way that this does not happen, namely by having -two- RP dump phases per rotation. It's slightly more confusing to execute but should theoretically prove better.

Assuming a glyphed IT and starting at 0 RP:

IT, 25 RP
PS, 35 RP
Ob, 55 RP
FS, 15 RP / HB, 60 RP
IT, 50 RP / 95 RP
BS, 60 RP / 115 RP
Dump

So IT->PS->Ob->FS/HB->IT->BS->Dump should work better. (This is repeatable except that BS and the second IT swap positions each time.)

Quick tests put me at about 1900 DPS with Thevidon's rotation, 1950 with mine, and 2050 with the 2xOb rotation, using 27/44 and Razorice with heroic-level gear and The Jawbone. No horn used to minimize user error.

Edit: Hmm, forgot to glyph Obliterate after respeccing from Unholy, so those numbers don't really mean anything. But I'd think that pushes the tests towards 2xOb even further.

 

seanvo

Kuro, your mentioning of the 27/44 build and 2xOB rotation - was this the build and rotation I mentioned in my post above? Or perhaps the standard 'IT>OB>OB>BS...' rotation and different build?

 

Mild Confusion

Interesting thread in the Class Mechanics main forum.

Is melee hit cap really 9%?

People are getting reports of not recieving any melee special or white misses below 9% hit cap. I've been personally running about 15 hit rating above the hit cap.

I know how valuable hit is untill the cap, but how valuable is hit after getting the melee hit cap?