Certainly IT is an attack central to the rotation, but not so much because of it's insane dps-output, but more due to its rp-generation (which again, causes insane dps-output). That is not changed, though.

My point is just, that phrases like "[...] is not what blizzard had in mind when they designed the class." are stupid, since Blizzard reps have said multiple times, that they are pretty much with every patch surprised what players come up with - not all of those things being bad. And in my opinion, 20-51-0 was a fun spec to play, that didn't rely on 1 button to be pushed repeatedly and except for the fact, that blizzard may not have intended for IT to be used three times every ten seconds, there was no reason at all to kill it. It was pretty much the only valid spec for anyone who likes fast-paced UP-clicking more than boring slow 1,5-sec-GCD-BP-clicking.

I'm not sure how you could get a clearer "we don't like IT spam builds" message than this:

The first part is mostly about unholy dipping into frost. Unholy shouldn't be "a crazy Icy Touch spamming juggernaut" which is understandable.

The second part doesn't interfere with the concept of 20-51-0 at all. 20% of your damage coming from icy touch is still by far "some" and not "most". Unholy takes a substantial amount of it's damage from things like DC, UB and those aren't even mentioned in the "Unholy concept".

This quote doesn't give any indicatives why 20-51-0 needs to be broken (not sure that it is, yet, though).

Well, i support it. i dont like the it spam, but in my opinion it should have decent dps, surely not the most.

I found it a way too simple to play, spamming 6 ITs nearly in a row and i am not the only one. If you want to play that way, it should be possible.

But you have to be clear, that a fire mages loving using arcane missiles and frost bolt will never do the most damage - they cannot fullfill every wish, every rotation you wish(!) to use. Diseaseless Blood and IT-Spam were simply never supposed to function that good, to say not even better than the strike heavy ones.

Which doesnt mean, i want it to get nerfed (or at least not too much).

As Frost-2H OB i am able to deal around 3600 DPS on a 1HP Bossdummy. People telling me, they deal now 2800 DPS seems a lot like broken to me.

Just because it's called "6xIT" doesn't mean that you permanently spam 6x IT... For dps-reasons it is way more efficient to split into 2x 3xIT, but nevermind. "way too simple to play" can only someone say who's never played this spec up to its potential. It's a constant watching of procs and buffs and slight adjustments to the rotation. Honestly, compared to any other viable roation (blood, unholy, obliterate anyone?) it is definitely not "easier" and very likely even the most intricate.

Your mage-comparison is (sorry) so pointless, I won't even respond to it.

20-51-0 is a widely accepted, widely used and by a lot of people liked rotation, that doesn't defy the death knight class principle or is in any way overpowered. It's not something I just made up because it's a spec I would like to work...

With the recent change in black ice and tundra stalker. Hungering cold might be quite useful in aoe situations, atleast more useful than lichborne.

You add frost fever with hungering cold and howl for 15% extra dmg. It's like now, you should get that frost fever on them, which I find abit annoying. But it's obviously what dks are intended to do.

Overall it should be the same. Froststrike and IT make less than 50% of the damage, so you lose 10% Frostdamage (lets say 5% dmg overall, its really lower OB-heavy rotas), but you gain flat 5% damage from Tundrastalker. Overall it will be imo a nerf (since Razorice benefits less, IT deals lesser damageand so on) but it should be overal nearly the same for 13/51/7.

Pretty much summarizes why it was fun, because it was an added challenge to the class and rewarded excellent play and adaptation with your rotation to what the raiding environment was. I find it saddening that blizzard is trying to tank one of the more interesting specs that DK's have to offer.

That is far from clear at this point, especially with the T8 sigil favoring IT spam over OB spam. Although, looking at my numbers, OB spam builds going for 6xFS in Blood Presence (see my previous post for more details) by combining 4pT7 with either Dirge, the BT bug, or (worse) both may be slightly overpowered with the T8 sigil. At the current turnover rate on changes, we will have to see what on PTR lives to see 3.1.

I just got finished gemming and enchanting my extra T7.5 crap sitting in my bank for this exact reason.

I was really hoping to avoid T7 in 3.1 and go with a build that didn't rely on OB, but I guess we don't really have many options at the moment.

Here's to waiting for the next PTR build.

Going to have to agree you here. FS/OB builds are looking ugly and probably going to need some adjustment. My personal preference was a 5/44/22 build. Against every dps build I could come up with I was seeing a 20% dps difference between other builds. Against the cookie cutter 17/0/54 unholy build the only reason was I could possibly account for the significant difference, on the dummy mind you, was merciless combat, and the possibility that someone else had EP up. Noting that I had none of the gear to actually make the build work up to it's theoretical max.

The likely solution will be a toning, or scaling of FS damage back, or to make the DC and FS glyph more equivalent because right now the FS one is a 20% dps gain and the other 15%.

The next real test for FS/OB is to see it's stat scaling, but I fear that it will only widen the margin as tiers progress.

Well, I still get *slightly* higher numbers out of B/S rather than UA/TS. I think the increased crit on OB and the tiny amount of RP is pushing it up. It's likely due to the gear I was using to test the spec being the savage pvp set. In all likelihood with the t8 gear and sigils that 49/22 would be higher.

I looked thorughout the whole thread, but didn't find any real answer:

What role plays hasterating for frost DKs? Obviously i wont gem for it, but it is a stat i always tried to avoid (because of the very low contribution to DPS). Now a DK from a top guild told me that he has as Frost2H about 600 Hasterating that haste is a desirable stat for frost. I have only 66 because i avoided haste the best way possible (just like apr) und just took the t7 legs for 4p bonus.

What is your opinion? I am talking about highend raiding (nearly best in slot). Does the higher KM-proccchance give me that much more DPS that haste can be a pretty desirable stat?

Edit: I am talking about OB-heavy rotations, atm 17/54, with 3.1. potentially 13/51/7.

A quick look at the Theorycrafting Think Tank - Death Knight: PvE DPS shows that haste is still a very inferior stat, especially to obliterate heavy builds. The thread is a bit outdated on some points, since it won't be updated before 3.1, but it's still quite reliable on stat comparisons.
Effectively the only benefit haste brings to an OB-build is an increase in white damage and a slight increase in KM-procs. But since OB-builds only use IT once per ten seconds and the only other spell is the occassional Rime-proc, there is virtually no benefit for GCD. Also, OB-builds don't have (yet) Necrosis or BCB which would benefit from haste rating.

So to summarize, haste is most definitely not a stat to shoot for as a DK of any spec, more so as frost.

I've tested all the cookie cutter specs for Blood/Unholy/Frost yesterday, and then started experimenting a bit with some other specs. For each spec I did a 5 minute test on a 1hp raid dummy (including using all cooldowns) to compare avg DPS.
From my tests, one of the specs that stood out was 3/51/16(+1). It averaged out at 3700 DPS (HB didn't hit any other dummy, no ebon plague on the dummy), which was almost 400 DPS higher than 20/51/0 (using it ob ob bs rotation) and 700 DPS higher than 20/51/0 (using two diseases rotation).

The rotation I used was the following:

IT PS OB BS BS rp dump
OB OB OB rp dump

I did prioritize using FS whenever KM was up, and used up any Freezing Fog procs in the 'rp dump' phase.

If I take into account the fact that Merciless Combat was up all the time due to the 1hp dummy, my DPS would be around 3400 (napkin math sorry), which is about the number I was hitting as 17/0/54 (3430 DPS, the 2nd highest DPS spec that came out of my tests).

All in all quite a nice spec, easy rotation, will get a nice buff from ebon plague (or similar effect), will possibly be even better with the new Frost Strike sigil. Main downside is the weak pet. Also usefullness of HB is very situational, good for aoe trash, but very limited on single target as Freezing Fog procs are very rare since you only use IT once in a full rotation.

edit: i do realise this spec is nothing new, but i wanted to compare numbers from the lastest build.

That may sound a little weird, but i just got [Betrayer of Humanity] and I have a problem with that. I used to play DW both 32/39 and 13/58.
I've tried to play 17/0/54 but my dps was... a little lower than I've expected. The are two reasons in my oppinion:

- I have no [Sigil of Awareness],
- I just suck keeping diseases up while spamming PS,
- both.

Having in mind that I miss that sigil is it worth to go for 21/50 spec and use 2x3IT rotation,

or 44/27 and keep 32/39 rotation but use FS instead of DC as RP dumper and gear for haste? Is keeping HB out of rotation to use it for Freezing Fog procs a good idea?

Armory shows my current gear at the moment, but i have some other spare items, mainly with haste on them.
I don't want to play Blood in any case if this would be an option.

I dont see any big problem.

Right now with our setbonus from t7 you dont have any problem at all and after patch, well you have either the option to use ERW(+25), blood tap(+10). Both generate RP off the gcd. You also have the horn of winter which can be used in a emergency case, the ghoul and so on. Not to forget the rime proccs which will generate one or another free hb which in case you dont use a second FS will give you a big rp jump(32+5). So it might not work every time w/o 4p t7, but the rotation should be working with some "help". And at least i am always using horn right before the pull so i always have(with ghoul) when the fight starts.
I love the new HB glyph for aoe purposes (DND+HB+BB within 3 gcd is great). But for single target dps, it might not be really useful at all.

Edit: I was interested how it would play out without the p4 t7 bonus - and i am pretty concerned that we wont take t8 pieces to replace our t7 bonus.

I did 3650 dps witt pt7 - replaced shoulders with nearly equally the same stats - and lost 300 dps, down to 3350. EP was up all the time. Is this also your experience? Anyone seeing a not that big dropp in dps?

The way I see it, assuming that's accurate and not having the 4pcT7 bonus nets around a ~9% DPS loss across the board, you still have to consider that the new T8 bonus will be bringing an additional 20-40% bonus damage per disease to both your blood strike and obliterate. I can't imagine how that plus the upgraded stats on the pieces themselves would not make it worth using, maybe not by a huge margin like the T7 bonus was, and most likely not worth replacing any pieces until you have all 4 of the T8, but still worth it in the end.

With 2 diseases up the t8 4pc is a 4% damage increase to OB and BS. It is a damage increase just not all that spectacular.

The t8 4p bonus brings about 3.3% more obliterate damage at maximaum so overall the setbonus brings about 1%. Pretty much worse compared to my 10% or your 9% for the t7 bonus. Thats really low. I wonder: will t7 4pc be still mandatory for frost dks even in ulduar equip (or at least not really an upgrade on that slots)?

Its just 3.3%. And i am pretty sure that obliterate and blood strike make only up to one third of our damage.

It's 3.3% for HS 4% for OB and BS and 4.2% for SS.

Removed due to just getting bashed for my attemt to help people.