Erm, he raises a good point. Why *does* the OP list a 2H build as the standard spec for frost?

Dual wielding will gain you more rune strike due to the quicker attack speed, and your rune strikes also hit about 10% harder. the only difference anymore between 2hand and DW is the amount of stamina on 1 handers compaired to say a 2 hander with 155 stam and 2 sockets . altho DW does make up for it with the amount of agil almost allways being equal to the amount of stam on the weapon , and in terms of eliminating incomming damage 1 agil = 98% of 1 dodge. so yes it is very much up to play style, if ur having trouble with threat go DW, u wanna be hp king go 2hander.

Spell deflection is patently bullshit, parsings have shown that it does literally nothing throughout IC up to LK. I have yet to see LK parsings with SD up, so I can't comment if it's the wonderkid in that encounter but I doubt it. Recently a gentleman posted a Sindragosa log, it had ticked three times saving an amazing 15k in total. Pre sindragosa, it'll only tic on the pathetic DOT in Putricide which you didn't care, the pathetic DOT in Festergut which you likewise didn't care about, and Frostbolts in Vali and Lady. I suppose it may work on BQ Whirl too, but AMS takes care of that anyway. That kind of expenditure in talent points for that pathetic a return is totally worthless and not worth the hassle of reapplying diseases a lot more often.

We know Blizzard doesn't desire (and won't allow us) to go to a IT spam mode of playing, so it can be inferred that IT+PS will not be more TPS than OB despite the IT buff (on the basis that 2xIT can't be more TPS than 1xOB or 2xHS, otherwise we'd use our D runes for IT).

Don't design around mashing IT.

You're still missing the actual point of his post. It isn't that the talent does nothing ever it's that when it actually decides to do something it still doesn't do much and that a trade off of epidemic for spell deflection isn't worthwhile if you really desire the talent.

Firstly the analogy is poor. The statement wasn't that spell deflection was poor because it only proc'd three times or the frequency of procs alone but that it proc'd three times and only stopped 15k damage. That's 5 thousand damage prevented per talent point on a fight with relatively frequent and high magical damage bursts. One would think be an ideal show case for the talent as a useful source of damage reduction. Rather then restate RNG is RNG as if it meant something I checked the logs and it looks like the person in question was hit by 10 frost breaths meaning the ability actually proc'd slightly above average with two being closer to what we'd expect with closer to 20% parry rating. In a best case scenario, which that essentially was, you're getting extremely low mileage out of the talent both in terms of overall damage reduction and in terms of its life saving properties in a worst case scenario. Data gathered from other fights doesn't make the talent fare any better. The only other fight where I can see the proc being of any significance is arguably lich king in which most guilds I assume tank swap to handle the ability or like my group has done in 10 and 25 use cool downs to intercept most if not all of them. Kelseth I suppose on hard mode could potentially allow you to see significant overall reduction in damage taken but my experience with hard modes is limited.


If it had proc'd three times and say maybe stopped 20k damage each time it might be a different story, but thus far the talent has proven difficult to justify even from a perspective of doing more then enough threat and seeking any way to decrease damage taken.