Haste also affects the Killing Machine proc rate

Haste also affects your KM procs as more haste = more procs so imo it's roughly equivalent or higher valued to armor pen at low levels, but armor pen will probably be valued higher as you get more of it.

As has been pointed out, Haste was terrible before 3.1, and is now terrible x 1.3, which is still pretty bad. Based on the last stat weights I've seen (and it would be nice if someone could post some recent ones), our current order of stat priority is Str/ArP/Crit/Agi/AP/Exp/Haste/Hit(above 263).

I would say out of the five weapons we have available in Ulduar 25, the worst would be [Worldcarver]. Haste and Expertise are very bad stats for Frost. Haste only affects white hits, spell gcd's, and a very small increase in KM procs. Expertise doesn't affect our spells obviously, but also doesn't affect Frost Strike, which makes up the largest portion of our damage. [Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion] is clearly the best by some margin, with it's higher weapon dps, Strength, Crit, and ArP, which are all good stats for us. [Earthshaper] is probably best of the non-hard mode weapons, but the hit on it presents a problem, in that you would have to gear quite differently to use it, and if you were then to upgrade, you would have to do some significant regearing to stay at the hit cap. [Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned] edges out [Stormrune Edge] just slightly, and they both have Agi rather than Str based stats, which surprisingly isn't too bad for us given the four dps stats rather than three on the Str based weapons.

I would say that unless you can get your hands on [Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion], which won't be an option for many of us for a while, then [Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned] or [Stormrune Edge] would be the weapons to be going for.

I think you're actually right. I did a whole heap of dummy testing tonight and I found the two rotations are actually almost identical on dps. Was getting about 3.8k on average for IT rotation, and 3.9k for HB rotation. Given the slightly simpler rotation without using IT, and the better incidental aoe for HB, I'll be switching in future. I also use a priority system, which I think is much more fluid and easy to work with.

The only thing I'd say to this is the same argument you give for expertise being lower valued applies to armor pen as well, in that it doesn't apply to spells or Frost Strike. However I would say that being as global cooldown limited as Frost is, capping expertise and hit are a must for a bare minimum up to special attack hit cap, and I prefer to still cap spell hit cap given that a missed howling blast also means 0 disease damage rotation for almost a full 20 seconds, no matter how infrequently it occurs.

Haste may not equal armor pen in value though I just haven't done as much research as I should or read much as to how much it affects KM procs and how much armor pen affects frost, however I can't imagine it's head over heals better atleast when you're not purposefully stacking armor pen since it tends to be more benefitial in high numbers.

No offense, but if your HB misses (and you are running no BP build), it seems to be a really dense move to not IT and run without FF until HB comes up. This being considered, I do like running with the Spell Hit cap for this reason (as it removes the need to IT because HB won't miss, though I am not sure if this is worth it compared to the extra other stats one would gain at the expense of hit).

Hit Rating is generally a wasted stat past 263 (288 if you're horde or alliance deprived of draenei), which happens to be both melee hit cap (8%) and spell hit cap (17%, 10% from HR, 1% from Inspiring Presence, 3% from Misery/IFF, 3% from Virulence). Most raids these days run at least 1 shadow priest and feral druid, if you have neither then it's a serious problem.

I PvP, primarily, on my Death Knight -- so I'm hesitant to argue against "established fact" in an area outside of my expertise -- you'll have to forgive me if I ultimately prove to be wrong.

Simply put, I think you're wrong about Rune of the Fallen Crusader. It cannot possibly be only 2 PPM. I can walk up to a target dummy and start spamming skills, and, after the first proc, it'll often be 2-3 minutes before Rune of the Fallen Crusader falls off of me. It has nearly 100% up time. I'm experiencing upwards of 8-9 PPM with my 40% haste (Unholy Presence + Improved Icy Talons).

I think if you do some testing and find a better value for its actual PPM/uptime, and redo the math, it might well be giving Rune of Razorice a run for it's money.

I think part of the issue is that it's proccing not of just off white swings, but all melee attacks -- including Frost strikes. It's entirely possible that it's actual PPM is much higher than Blizzard intended, but I can assure you it's not a mere 2 PPM.

Edit: Ahhh, I see from parts of the thread I hadn't read yet that others have posted similar thoughts to mine. I don't know if anyoen's done any real testing to find the actual Proc rate, but there's at least several suggestions of anecdotal evidence of FC's superiority. Sorry, I normally read threads all the way through before posting in them, but this one was a tad bit long.

Hello again my fellow Ice-hearted Deathknights! Been a while since I posted here due to 6 night raid weeks clearing new content. Some of the posts I made during the 3.1 PTR, as well as videos on youtube, have generated numerous comments and questions about the specs and rotations I use while raiding. So, instead of people asking me in-game via lvl 1 alts in Durotar or on youtube, I am going to post here a complete guide to Frost DPSing in Ulduar... Nex style! Please note, I am not trying to say other specs, rotations or gearing preferences are wrong, this is simply what I have found to be very successful in 25 man Ulduar.

This post will consist of Spec, Rotation and gearing, including all enchants, gems and other info that might help.

The Spec

21/50/0

You may notice I chose to take 1 point in Veteran, rather than HB. This is a preference thing, but I often found I did not have enough time in my rotation to get in the free HB procs from rime and the 2 Expertise + 2% str helped my Obliterates a bit more. Also, I have chosen to take Hungering Cold. Currently my guild is working on Mimiron. we have him to 4% in Phase 4 (each part was at 4%) and Hungering helps a ton in Phase 3 for the adds. It's also very nice on fights like Razorscale and XT-002 to slow down some adds that would otherwise run around. Again, these choices are my own preference.

The Rotation

1.) PS, IT, BS, BS, Rune Tap, Unbreakable Armor, OB
2.) FSx4 (If you are able to pop your Tap and UA, maybe a Horn off the pull you can get 4 full FS with ease)
3.) OB, FS x 3 (Basically spam OB and FS alternating for Killing Machines or when you need more RP)

Basically 3 phases to this rotation, as listed above. All dps is done in UNHOLY PRESENCE! This means Fast spamming of abilities, 15% faster Auto-attacks (more KM Procs) and of course, the ever-helpful movement increase. If you try to use this spec and rotation in blood presence you will never be able to keep up with using your runes and RP and eventually have to start skipping attacks to keep your diseases and death runes up.

The Gear

I have gone through all the possible drops in Ulduar 25, NON-HARD mode bosses only, with a few exceptions (trinkets). My reasoning is that this set of gear will be easier to obtain and a more realistic goal for most guilds out there. Keep in mind that some of these items are NOT best in slot, but when in a complete set you gain the most benefit possible.

Conq. Darkrune Helm - Ebon Hold Helm Enchant, Chaotic Skyflare Meta and Bold Scarlet Gem (Bold Dragon's Eye if JC).
Spiked Battleguard Choke
Conq. Darkrune Shoulder - Inscription Enchant or Sons of Hodir, Bold Scarlet Gem.
Drape of the Drakerider - 22 Agility Enchant.
Conq. Darkrune Chestpiece - 10 All stats, 2x Bold Scarlet Gem.
Decimator's Armguards - 50 AP enchant.
Conq. Darkrune Gloves - 44 AP enchant, Bold Scarlet Gem.
Belt of the Titans - Bold Scarlet + Sovereign Twilight Gems (Bold Dragon's eye if JC).
Conq. Darkrune Leggings - Leggings Enchant, Bold Scarlet + Sovereign Twilight Gems (Bold Dragon's eye if JC).
Boots of the Underdweller - 32 AP enchant.
Sif's Promise
Strength of the Automaton
Fury of Five Flights
Greatness
Earthshaper - Fallen Crusader.
Sigil of the Vengeul Heart

As noted, this set of gear is only from normal boss modes in 25 man Ulduar, save for the trinkets. Total DPS critical stats, WITH spec bonuses are 293 Hit rating (5 above the 9% cap for those lacking drenai) and 23.7 Expertise. The expertise is slightly under cap, but it only effects Obliterate and Bloodstrike for Frost, making it ideal to not focus as much on it. Base Strength of the complete set is 1250, not including gems and enchants.

This gear set includes all 5 piece of t8.5 because many of them are best in slot and those that aren't can be replaced later by hard mode items (Legging and Helm mainly). Again, the items alone may have better alternatives, but in combination they yield the idea stats for a frost DK, pre-hard mode.

WWS Parse of XT-002

Here is last week's WWS for XT-002. Note, I had to run twice from Gravity bombs, and once to help kill scrap bots that were getting a little close.

<IRS> of Perenolde

Here is my ARMORY LINK, which contains the same gearing and spec I used in this fight. Notice I have nice gear, but my weapon is a bit lacking :P


Anyways, as I said, this is what I find works for frost dps. I love the playstyle using Unholy presence and will be very reluctant to change my spec. It scales very well with gear and is right up there with the other classes for dps. I hope this post helps some people get a good idea on where to start with being an Ice-Wielding Death machine!

I'm interested to see that you went with VotTW and DRM instead of HB and Virulence. I can't really see how anything could beat HB and Virulence for those four points. Virulence makes you nearly spell hit capped at the melee cap, and HB is purely excellent. I was ready to hate HB once they moved it and increased the cooldown, but now that Rime procs off Obliterate, and glyphed it puts up FF, it is actually even better than it was before. With the massive amount of aoe required in Ulduar, nothing else that Frost can do can really compare.

The gear list looks good, and similar to what I was thinking, but like many Frosties I am reluctant to change out of 4 pce T7, even with the nerf. I think that that extra 20-25 RP you will get per double rotation with the nerfed T7 is better than the stat upgrade on T8. At best it's a sidegrade. Note that they haven't really made T8 any better, so we are just going to be experiencing a nerf in damage regardless of which tier we decide to go with. Also the melee hit cap is 8% (or 263) now, and 7% if you are Ally, so you don't need that much hit.

So you are saying you spend 4 points, and one of them is a 51 talent points that gets proc from another 3 other talent points, to just get 2% str and 2 exp? You'd better give more explanation than just "personal preference."

PPM mechanics are calculated relative to white swings. By that I mean an ability that is labeled at 2 PPM will proc twice a minute from white attacks assuming 0 haste.

Attached are the numbers from about a 30min long test I ran. As you can see, FC is about 2 PPM; the higher number is due to haste and a lucky streak I got at the end of testing.

I'm gathering ArP gear right now to do some tests in Frost spec. My recount tells me that i have about 50% of dmg as physical, so i think ArP will do some trick.
Btw, how do you think, if i don't have enough GCD's to use all of my RP on froststrikes(using BP), can i trade 4pT7.5 bonus for additional STR and ArP?

If you got an overflow of RP (which you shouldn't) you either go UP or you start skipping BS - but both options will cut your dps compared to a smooth rotation.

Recently i have been messing around with 27/44/0. Which basicly has same rotation with the old ITx6 but spams BSx6 instead. I find the spec interesting and the dummy test numbers are 3kish dps on a target dummy with 35%< hp. That is without bloodstrike glyph. Without bloodstrike glyph, bloodstrike does 64% weapon damage with that spec (and has higher static +damage than OB). With blood strike glyph, it should be around 70% weapon damage assuming there is a proper debuff on the boss.

I'm testing this build mostly because of the overloads of ArP gear from ulduar, that i trust, will scale blood strike to a decent level. I might be wrong, for i have not done calculations about it, but should be able to do some decent damage. Does it sound crazy or makes sense, opinions ?

The latest stat weights I have unfortunately are from pre-3.1, and apart from the obvious changes to ArP and Haste, I'm not sure if these have changed much with the 3.1 patch. PLEASE could someone who knows how to calculate them post a new set of stat weights from this patch.

So before 3.1 for 2h Frost I had;

AP - 1.00
Strength - 2.30
Agility - 1.05
Haste - 0.55
Crit - 1.15
Hit (>263) - 0.45
Armor Pen - 1.05
Expertise - 1.05

Now given the 30% increase to Haste, and the 25% increase to ArP, that gives us;

Haste - 0.72
Armor Pen - 1.31

Remember that Haste only affects our white attacks and spell gcd's, and white attacks are at best 20% of our damage. The only other thing it affects is an increase in KM procs. 32.8 Haste rating gives a 1% Haste increase. A 1% increase in Haste would also increase the chance for KM to proc by 1%. Given a base KM proc rate of 5ppm, that means our 32.8 Haste rating would increase our KM proc rate by 0.05 ppm, or to put it differently, to increase our proc rate from 5ppm to 6ppm we would need a 20% Haste increase, or 656 Haste rating.

In other words, the increase in KM procs due to Haste rating is minimal. This is why Haste is so bad (in fact our worst stat) for Frost DK's.

I haven't provided frost dps stat weights because I'm pretty sure there is at least something wrong with my model for it. That being said take these numbers as preliminary (although logically they do make sense). Here is what my calculations have produced thusfar for a heavily geared Uludar Frost DK (T8).

Stat	APE
AP	1.00
STR	2.73
HIT	~2.82
HIT(capped)	~0.50
EXP	2.29
ARP	1.71
Crit	1.26
Haste	0.79
WpnDPS	9.49
Spec	17/51/3
Diseases	FF+BP

Again I must stress these are preliminary and the only reason I'm posting them is because I think they get the right point across and are as accurate as I will be able to get them for a long time.

A note on the increase in ArP value. The set used to calculate this had ~300ArP from items. That combined with the change in ArP calculation could be what adjusted the value of ArP so significantly.

I understood that to be the case, but then I would expect it to not proc off plaguestrike, blood strike, frost strike, and obliterate -- as that completely skews the metric. My point was that it was either clearly higher than 2 ppm *or* proccing off special attacks. It must therefore be the latter. Do you happen to know if that's intended?

If the chance to proc per melee is based off weapon swing speed (as it would have to be with PPM), then doesn't that mean slower weapons get more procs because the number of special attacks is fixed by your runes and runic power generation and doesn't scale with attack speed?

For instance, over a given minute, that's 6 sets of runes for 36 runes total. 6 Blood runes, 6 death runes, 12 Unholy and 12 Frost -- ignoring Blood tap. I expect 4 icy touches, 4 plague strikes, 6 blood strikes and 11 obliterates. That generates 510 RP, throw in 20 more from Horn of Winter, and another 24 from Butchery -- that's 554 RP which gives you ~17 Frost strikes. So I expect, over a typical minute with a typical frost rotation with typical runes to do a total of 38 melee special attacks. That doesn't change with weapon speed.

Now lets assume, solely for the sake of pointing out why PPM effects proccing of specials seems horribly broken to me, that you run the rotation with a weapon with a 1 second swing speed (I realize that's not realistic) and one with a 3 second swing speed.

The 3 second swing speed weapon gives 20 white attacks over a minute, and with 2 ppm you expect 20 swings to equal 2 procs. But throwing in your 38 specials, and you are looking, assuming each attack keeps that same chance to proc, at 5.8 PPM. Throwing in the effects of 40% haste on the white swings and you're looking at 6.6 PPM.

On the flip side, with the 1 second weapon, you get 60 swings and 2 procs from that. Making it 98 attack after specials, means you only get 3.26 PPM (4.06 after haste). Thus, in summary, allowing PPM effects to proc off specials gives slower weapons an advantage -- the very thing PPM normalization was intended to help avoid. So is Rune of the Fallen Crusader meant to proc off special attacks, or is that unintended?

1) You are lying when you say you do not have enough GCD time in Unholy Presence to use Rime procs. You do. In fact, you even have enough time to use Rime procs in Blood Presence, though admittedly it gets tricky if you are using the Icy Touch glyph over the Howling Blast glyph.

2) This is a forum for analyzing frost dps, and most of the time the argument vacillates back and forth between what spec/rotation/itemization spread is the best and why. As a general rule we try to avoid submitting templates or ideas that are not optimal. Not taking a 51 point talent that is incredibly useful in almost every Ulduar fight in order to get a minor passive stat upgrade is not a good strategy.

For the record, and for all new people coming into this thread:

Howling Blast is an excellent ability, do not pass it up. Please make at least a token glance through the thread before posting. If talent spreads look 'gimmicky' like the 27/44 6x Blood Strike spec someone posted on this page, it probably is. Blizzards latest changes to Frost have made it very clear:

They want us to get Howling Blast,
They don't want us to spam Icy Touch,
They want us to use Obliterate,
They want Frost Strike to be really, really amazing (new Sigil)

If your build doesn't make use of these things, it's probably not going to work out that well. Unless Blizzard makes more significant changes to the Frost tree, I really don't see us finding anything better than 13/51/7 or 17/51/3, and even if they did make more significant changes I doubt they could do anything to Howling Blast that would merit not training it.

Erekose, you seem to be knowledgeable enough: Im curious about 13/51/7 and 17/51/3


While using the HB glyph should i be including PS for blood plague while using 17/51/3? Im not the best numbers guy but it seems that i pull ahead skipping plague strike.

Also i have the same question while using 13/51/7, ive read some of the data people are saying but i just dont feel convinced Epidemic is worth the loss of crit if i can skip blood plague while using 17/51/3

I cant confirm this with raid data as im usually tanking. But id like to get as much as i can out of my character when i finially get the chance to dps.

Personally im drawn to 17/51/3 with the HB glyph, and i would like to skip using PS for blood plague if i can possibly do more dps without it.

Please dont flame me coach! i am searching for any useful information you can provide.

Cookie Cutters:

13/51/7 (my personal choice of weapon) and yes, epidemic is must have, gives nice flow to the rotation and you have time to use the full rotation without refreshing diseases.
Unholy Presence, Fallen Crusader
Glyphs: IT, FS, OB

Rotation:
1. IT-PS-(FS)-OB-(FS)-BS-BS-(FS)Dumb
2. OB-(FS)-OB-(FS)-OB-(FS)Dumb
rime procs always after FS so you don't waste KM proc on it, unless your dealing with lots of adds.





17/51/3 (No you do not apply PS)
Blood Presence, Fallen Crusader(?)
Glyphs: HB, FS, OB

Rotation:
1. HB-(FS)-OB-(FS)-BS-BS-(FS)Dumb
2. OB-(FS)-OB-(FS)-OB-(FS)Dumb
naturally you will refresh the HB during the row nr.2 if you do not get rime proc.


EDIT: I just wish we would have active person to keep up the first post's for this thread also, for example Unholy DPS thread is freaking awesome and I wish we would have something like that.

If you take the Howling Blast glyph, you will almost never use plague strike, and in fact only use it after a miss on Howling Blast with less than 8 seconds left on your frost fever...of course if you're hit capped, this will never happen.

Link to Previous Frost Recap

Above link to a post a little further back in the thread by me contains the essentials of what you need to know in terms of rotation, concept, and execution but you have to put in the time testing the different specs in-game to see which you prefer

And hey, I only flame if you try to tell other people who are looking for advice not to spec for Howling Blast...come on that's just mean!

I've been toying around between UP and BP with 13/51/7 spec, and I have not seen much of a difference at all. In UP, there seems to be slight gaps with 0.3-0.4 seconds of nothing at times, while in BP I feel slightly pushed to get all of my attacks in. However, I noticed in another raid that our other DK was fine in BP. He's geared for blood mostly, but does not have 4pc T7.5. With the loss of the 10 RP from breaking the bonus (or the nerf to 5 next patch), would this make the rotation less crowded and once again better in BP?

Also, I have seen several people saying that HB is an excellent ability, but I just don't see it. It is decent AoE since it has the 8 second cooldown, and it doesn't do much overall on bosses if you aren't using the glyph. On most single target fights in Ulduar, it comes out around 3-4% of my damage, which is not "excellent" for a 51 point talent. Don't get me wrong, I like it and would still take the point in it, but it's kind of like combat rogues taking KS since it's there =/