This was posted by Methods in the Frost Thread yesterday. Hopefully it may help to determine a seperate BiS List for Frost.

Ah yeah, just copy-pasted it and forgot to change it. Fixed now, thanks.

Ok cool, I'll see what changes that makes to Tier 8 and get cracking on a separate Frost set.

As I mentioned a few pages ago, I've been working on an Excel spreadsheet to make calculating the best sets for all of these variables (Race / Auras, Specs, Levels of Gear) quite a bit easier. I think I'm finally at a point where I'm comfortable releasing something with the caveat that it is still very much in development. With that said, I've developed this spreadsheet from scratch primarily to support this thread:


Description:

• The Death Knight Gear Optimizer is a comprehensive gear selection spreadsheet developed in Microsoft Excel 2003/2007 designed to aid every Death Knight in making informed gear decisions. The program uses a variable weighting system to assign values to various sets of gear and exhaustively searches the selected items to provide a guaranteed optimal gearing solution. The optimizer can be used to find an overall Best-in-Slot wish list, or it can be used simply to figure out how best to utilize that newest upgrade.
  
• The gear optimizer provides intuitive ways to select items for calculation and takes into account almost every factor imaginable. An option for Smart Gemming is also available, which guarantees that the Death Knight Gear Optimizer not only provides you the best gear, but also the most appropriate way to gem it!
  
• Please note that this program is still under development. Please send any questions or bug reports to Zerack at AftermathLB via a Private Forum Message.

Download Link:

• Download Here - DK_Optimize_v1.4.2.zip (~310KB)

Features:

• Exhaustive gear search provides an optimal result everytime.
• Native implementation of racial bonuses from Axe Specialization to Dranei Hit Auras.
• Support for Hit and Expertise derived from talents.
• Calculation options to require specific Tier set bonuses in order to maximize gearing potential.
• Intuitive results screen shows both optimal gear and total statistics.
• Provides results for Two-Handed and Dual Wield gear sets.
• Calculation estimates let you know how long you have to wait.
• Weighted procs for trinkets allow accurate calculation of every slot.
• Gemming heuristics calculate the optimal gemming for every set to guarantee the best from every socket.

Examples:

• The home page, where the most important selections are made. Choose your race, stat weights, tier options, talent options, and more.
  
  

• An example of an item screen, where you can enter and update statistics for every item to analyze. Check boxes allow you to quickly choose which items to process without deleting valuable item information.
  
  

• The easy to understand calculation screen lets you know how long you need to wait for the calculations to finish. You can choose to cancel at any time to tweak your selections from the home screen and start over.
  
  

• One possible set of gear on the results screen. The gear is displayed in a familiar arrangement. Gems are colored according to the color of the gem, while the borders reflect the colors of the sockets that they are in. This example shows a result using naive gemming.
  
  

Version Notes:

• June 16, 2009 - Version 1.4.2
  • Added Trinket: Comet's Trail.
• June 10, 2009 - Version 1.4.1
  • Added all known Algalon 10 and 25 loot.
  • Added community calculated set weights for Blood and Frost specs.
• May 26, 2009 - Version 1.4
  • Added the ability to weight set bonuses and compare then natively.
  • Added several leather items that are BiS competitors.
  • Added two known Algalon 10-man drops.
  • Updated several items to reflect the 10-man hard mode iLevel increase.
• May 13, 2009 - Version 1.3.1
  • Fixed a bug that would occasionally cause expertise to be slightly overvalued.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some drop down boxes to function incorrectly.
  • Updated several items to reflect re-itemization.
  • Updated trinket values to approximate the average effect for each trinket.
  • Added correct socket bonuses for most hard mode drops.
  • Added calculation and display of post-enchant statistics for all sets.
• May 06, 2009 - Version 1.3
  • Fixed a bug that would cause certain gems to not be used in optimizations.
  • Added option to force hit and expertise caps in optimal sets.
  • Added logic to intelligently consider Crusher vs. Precision for glove enchants.
  • Added additional items to most slots by default.
  • Added information about drop location for all items.
  • Added the ability to load and store predefined weight sets.
• May 04, 2009 - Version 1.2
  • Implemented Smart Gemming
  • Fixed a bug that would cause incorrect values to be displayed on the results screen.
  • Fixed a bug that incorrectly double-counted certain gem values.
• April 30, 2009 - Version 1.1
  • Fixed a bug that would cause racial expertise bonuses to incorrectly influence the score of a set.
• April 29, 2009 - Version 1.0
  • Initial Release

Additional Comments:

To take a step back from the official-ese spouted above, this is a pretty cool tool. I'm always bothered when we post BiS sets that someone finds simply because there's very little we can do to 100% PROVE that this set it optimal for given conditions. This spreadsheet does away with that by iterating all the sets from gear you select and choosing the best one. As a note - the statistics on the final page are only stats from gear and enchants. They will not reflect the actual stats you see on your character screen in game. The program does intelligently choose the cloak, glove, and boot enchant, but that is all. The rest of the enchants are there for show / completeness as they are more or less a static gear decision.

The only other thing that I can think of that's a little unsatisfactory right now is the way that Dual Wielding is handled. I haven't implemented separate weights for OH DPS values, nor do I calculate changes in value for offhand racial expertise. All things that can be implemented later, most of which were excluded due to my own lack of knowledge. Finally - the spreadsheet is most definitely not lying when it says that calculating smart gemming will greatly increase computation time. I've managed to trim down the number of sets that it tries to gem very significantly, but doing gem logic even with smart socket selection for a gamut of more than 2-3 gems is very time intensive. It works perfectly, but be ready to wait some time for the results.

Please enjoy, and let me know if you have any problems. I'm more than glad to work to improve this and make it a great resource for the DK community here at EJ.

Just trying it out Zerack, looking really good! I especially love how it can give you upgrades/BiS around a set of already given items, this used to be my biggest headache. Few comments i can give so far:

1) calculation time, it's very fast even with smart gemming if i limit the number of items a lot, but if i tick all items as available it seems to take hours, but i guess that's unavoidable
2)Bitter Cold Armguards are from 10man hardmode, maybe you wanna mark them as "HARD" like you did with the rest of the hardmode items
3)Drape of Fuming Anger is one of the best cloaks for unholy, at least according to the numbers i got from Kahorie's sheet and lootrank, maybe you wanna add it? I noticed i can add items myself, i just thought it might be good to be there as a default option
4) on results page, would it be possible to have a little box with all the overall dps stats of the suggested set? Not that i doubt your tools accuracy, but i'd love to see how much hit/exp each set has and how the rest of the stats are distributed

I'd say it deserves its own thread, looks like a useful tool and ppl should have an easier time finding it, rather than looking into the 5th page of another thread.

Thanks for your effort, keep up the good work!

@Katsapliock - Thanks for the feedback. To hit your points in list form:

1. In regards to time: You can do quite a number of items if you turn smart gemming off. Even though the gemming is done after the item calculations, keeping track of 'candidate' sets to gem is memory intensive, and thus slows the process down. Smart Gemming really only takes huge amounts of time when you start doing things like turning on JC Gems AND permitting 4-5 additional gems. Unfortunately there's not much else I can do to optimize this process unless someone comes up with a really slick gemming heuristic.
2. I can certainly mark them in future releases as 10HARD / 25HARD for clarity. It's a simple text change that you noted you can make yourself if really needed. Having it default would be no problem.
3. I most likely skipped it over since I believe I mostly pulled in only 226 items and up for my testing purposes. I'll probably be going back and doing a more complete default-loot fill in later.
4. I'm not entirely sure that I understand your question on this one. Unless you have some odd glitch that I'm unaware of, there is a box displaying total contribution from gear statistics on the right hand side of the results page. Perhaps if your resolution is smaller you might have to scroll to the right slightly? I'm fairly certain that this is what you are asking for.

i feel silly now... yes i just had to scroll right a bit :/

Zerack - haven't had a chance to look at the spreadsheet yet but I have linked it in the OP. I could probably make it more prominent.

a3surd - For unholy it looks that way at least. Most of the new trinkets are loaded with hit rating, and you can't really utilize it all without being way over the cap.

How the hell do you get melencholy sabatons for frost? lol Haste is farrrr superior for frost then ArPen. More KM procs, more cinderglacier procs.

According to the stat weights at the top of this page, ArPen is over twice as strong as haste. If you have other numbers, feel free to post them, but in the absence of conflicting arguments, I wouldn't say haste is stronger than armor pen.

Very handy tool Zerack. Been trying to figure out best gear combo for 10man blood and seems that your excel sheet came to pretty much same conclusion as I did (using the 25man blood stat weights tho but dont think it'll mess up choices that bad). So working great so far just had to add most loot myself but didnt take too long :p

Thanks for your work Zerack, i'm currently at work and can't download the spreadsheet, but what i always thought was missing in spreadsheet it the ability to list only obtainable gear for the user.

Like at the moment my guild is working on mimiron without any hard modes, so i can only plan this far.

I mean, just a form with checkbox of bosses down with or wiithout hardmode should do the trick.

I just posted an updated version of the gear optimization utility that includes several new features. Check it out in my original post above.

@richard: It is unlikely that I will include Tuskarr's Vitality in the calculations. The purpose of this tool is not to determine what spec the user is, and that information would be required to make that decision. Additionally, the decision is not one necessarily of weights, but rather of preference. Increasing run speed does not affect the value of any other stat (It is a pure replacement of the existing enchant), so it is a fairly static gear decision that can be made independently of this tool. If I begin to see a compelling number of sets using Icewalker, perhaps the comparison will be more valid - but I hesitate to assign an EP value to a run speed enchant that is even remotely spec independent.

@Dwwimm: As of this release there is a field next to each item denoted 'Source'. This field has brief information about how the item can be obtained. I don't forsee implementing a way to filter by individual boss. Instead, the existing method of manually selecting which items to calculate seems appropriate. Your goal is still very obtainable, but it may just take an extra click or two.

My largest priority at this point is finding some way to calculate values for the various set bonuses. This would most likely be spec dependent, meaning these weights would have to be paired with the weights for AP, STR, CRIT, etc. Having these numbers would allow some better flexibility with forcing various set bonuses. If anyone has any insight on this issue, please let me know.

Consider adding:

Chestguard of the Recluse 0 83 0 0 0 63 232 63 591 1 4 4 4 8
Shoulderguards of Opportunity 0 0 69 65 0 43 0 0 1723 2 4 4 4 6

Darkmoon Card: Greatness 0 0 0 189 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4 4 9
Grim Toll 0 83 0 0 0 0 122 0 0 0 4 4 4 9
Mjolnir Runetone 0 0 0 0 102 0 122 0 0 0 4 4 4 9
Blood of the Old God 0 104 0 0 0 0 0 257 0 0 4 4 4 9

Using stat approximations for the trinkets instead of AEP values allows them to remain the same for varying stat weights. I used 33% uptime for greatness, 20% for the rest (which is generous for Blood of the Old God).

@Zerack

I wasn't talking about your tool, but about the list in the OP, since that one does account for spec .

It does mention it in the 'Enchants' section as an option for those without IUP.

Any idea how much better the T7 bonus is?
I'm only raiding 10-man Ulduar but managed to get four parts T7.5 from Naxx. This means I can only upgrade from T7.5 to T8.0.

I calculated the difference in stats on my attainable BiS set to about 100AP more when using T8.0 compared to using T7.5.
The T8 bonus would need to be closer than that to the T7 bonus for it to actually be an upgrade in my case.

My immediate gut feeling tells me that it's not an upgrade but I lack the math skills to calculate the setbonuses so I'm not sure.

Chaotic Skyflare is still better. The reason sites like Lootrank pick Swift Skyflare over Chaotic Skyflare is because they only compare 42AP with 21CR - 42EP vs ~29EP - they don't consider the 3% increased critical damage when calculating the gems worth.

Thanks alot for clearing that up Quetz, I suspected something like that due to that 3% has always seemed kinda hard to calculate specifically, but confirmation is always better to put my mind at ease

Sorry, I didn't realise Lootrank et al did that. I'll add it in to the OP to avoid future confusion.

How does the new Darkmoon Card: Death stack up against Bandit's Insignia? The 85 crit is less in stat weight than the 190 AP on the insignia but I am seeing people claim that Black Ice is effecting the death card's proc. Would the extra 10% damage from Black Ice make up for the lower stat weight? The death card also has ~250 higher low end damage than the insignia. I don't have a death card so I can't test for myself to verify if Black Ice effects the card's damage.

T7 bonus currently is worth 150-300 DPS for frost/unholy. Napkin math:
Which will be 75-150 extra DPS once the RP gain is halved in 3.1.2.

What spec are you? The T7 set bonuses are negligible for blood (worth 10 RP every 20 seconds). 2p T8 will benefit blood, but 4p t7 is still stronger than 2p t8 for frost/unholy.

My gut feeling is, when the changes go live, the 100++ STR from BiS gears (including ilvl 239) will outdo the 150-ish dps gain from using 4p t7, even for frost/unholy. Someone needs to crunch the number then, as rawr refuses to load my armory x.x

Using 0/10/61 currently. So I suppose I should stick with T7.5. Or spec blood and get T8.0. But I've been unholy since release and I've always loved it so I don't really like the idea of respeccing. I find the rotations used for blood to be to rigid to be fun.