Just because you want Frost to not be the DW build doesn't mean that you're right. GoG and TS are going to be no less potent for DW than they are for 2h.
How is Bloody Vengeance especially better for DW than Tundra Stalker? It's not.
Bloody Vengeance is a 9% physical damage boost at full stacks.
Tundra Stalker is a 15% boost to physical and magical damage just from having FF up. It also gives 5 expertise.
GoG is still going to be boosting the crit damage of Oblit (which will still have a high crit rate) and FS (which will still be your highest source of damage and will still get KM procs).
HB will still be a monster on AoE, and still gets Rime procs, and will still be a good way to spend a talent point.
The answer is white damage.
If you go and look at all other DW speccs for all classes, white damage becomes the most important source of DPS.
Making a simple theorycraft example of why Blood would destroy Frost as a DW tree:
Let's say as DW white damage becomes 35-40% of your damage (something between warriors and rogues).
Tundra Stalker's benefit to that damage is a big flat 0. Plus 5 expertise.
Blood Gorged would grant a +10% to that white damage, PLUS 10% armor penetration.
It doesn't take a genius to see where this gets. Blood Gorged would probably be a dps increase of something close to 5% compared to Tundra Stalker, of course depending on Expertise and gear.
To that you add Dark Vengeance, Dark Conviction etc.
I'll try to make a simplier statement:
Frost doesn't improve white damage in any way. White damage is the most important source of dps for DW builds. ToT in Blood would grant a far better dps output.
Once again, this isn't about me not wanting DW in Frost, it's about DW working poorly with Frost (expecially with this solution, since it defies what Frost had for DW builds - HB). That said, ranting on what should or should not be is pointless. Let's wait to see where ToT is in the tree and then theorycraft builds and dps.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
Let's say as DW white damage becomes 35-40% of your damage (something between warriors and rogues).
Tundra Stalker's benefit to that damage is a big flat 0. Plus 5 expertise.
Blood Gorged would grant a +10% to that white damage, PLUS 10% armor penetration.
One thing you have to consider about BG is that it's uptime is very low compared to TS. In just about every hard mode in Ulduar, you'll be taking massive amounts of damage. Staying above 75% hp is quite a task when you're dealing with those sorts of things.
On the other hand, TS is pretty much guaranteed to always be accounted for (aside from your opening rotation).
If you go and look at all other DW speccs for all classes, white damage becomes the most important source of DPS.
Making a simple theorycraft example of why Blood would destroy Frost as a DW tree:
Let's say as DW white damage becomes 35-40% of your damage (something between warriors and rogues).
Tundra Stalker's benefit to that damage is a big flat 0. Plus 5 expertise.
Blood Gorged would grant a +10% to that white damage, PLUS 10% armor penetration.
It doesn't take a genius to see where this gets. Blood Gorged would probably be a dps increase of something close to 5% compared to Tundra Stalker, of course depending on Expertise and gear.
To that you add Dark Vengeance, Dark Conviction etc.
I'll try to make a simplier statement:
Frost doesn't improve white damage in any way. White damage is the most important source of dps for DW builds. ToT in Blood would grant a far better dps output.
Once again, this isn't about me not wanting DW in Frost, it's about DW working poorly with Frost (expecially with this solution, since it defies what Frost had for DW builds - HB). That said, ranting on what should or should not be is pointless. Let's wait to see where ToT is in the tree and then theorycraft builds and dps.
I don't really understand your logic throughout this thread - you state (correctly in some circumstances) that Frost is being outperformed almost across the board by Unholy and Blood and that Frost needs something in order to be a truly viable option...Blood and Unholy are fine if those levels are the intended max DPS levels.
Any further buff to Frost would make it (even more) overpowered in PvP, so it was the most logical tree to work over into DW. Your statements that it is the worst tree for DW are meaningless....despite popular opinion, Blizzard does in fact know how to code their game, and if they are putting this much work into giving us a DW viable option then I have a fair amount of confidence that it will be a PvE boost in DPS while giving 2h Frost a slight nerf in PvP....otherwise known as exactly what most intelligent PvPers would agree on and what most Frost PvErs would want.
These changes are good, but how good they are has yet to be seen because of lack of information that will be coming soon.
Let's do something constructive...theorycraft new builds! We can simulate the point spread by only putting 3 points into BOTN and putting 3 points into chillblains to simulate ToT....heres my first instinct on what would be a good build:
Up to Dark Conviction....played in BP double disease OB Heavy, could also easily throw some points into DRM change glyphs and try ITx6 in UP, but I have a gut feeling that they want PvE DPS done in BP...although 15% Autoattack is really, really sexy for DW. EDIT: Would drop 1/3 Virulence for 1/2 Icy Reach once gear allows.
Seems to me at first glance that the Blood subspec would be more beneficial, especially with the lack of Subversion...its really hard to not go 55 deep in Frost considering the new DW talents...you get more OBs and Necrosis and 1/3 BcB.
You could easily drop to 54 by ditching Deathchill, it is a pretty mediocre talent. Technically you could do the same with Unbreakable Armor though it is a better talent investment. I was looking at 15/53/3 for the spell hit personally (and because no matter how hard I try UA always bunks up my rotation by 1-2 seconds which is irritating even if it's still a DPS gain).
I don't really understand your logic throughout this thread - you state (correctly in some circumstances) that Frost is being outperformed almost across the board by Unholy and Blood and that Frost needs something in order to be a truly viable option...Blood and Unholy are fine if those levels are the intended max DPS levels.
Any further buff to Frost would make it (even more) overpowered in PvP, so it was the most logical tree to work over into DW. Your statements that it is the worst tree for DW are meaningless....despite popular opinion, Blizzard does in fact know how to code their game, and if they are putting this much work into giving us a DW viable option then I have a fair amount of confidence that it will be a PvE boost in DPS while giving 2h Frost a slight nerf in PvP....otherwise known as exactly what most intelligent PvPers would agree on and what most Frost PvErs would want.
These changes are good, but how good they are has yet to be seen because of lack of information that will be coming soon.
I could agree that on principle since Frost is the "worst" of the trees in terms of pve dps working it into the DW tree can be a good idea, even if I personally dislike it; it's pointless to break something that works, and UH and Blood do work.
I'm merely pointing out that THIS change doesn't make Frost a DW tree, doesn't nerf Frost in pvp (as FS, as written, will probably hit HARDER with DW than it did with 2h) and generally does nothing but slapping DW as a minor dps boost on the specc,
Which, once again would be fine. What I'm wondering is if Blizz has previewed that the low tier UH and potentially blood talents are gonna be so desireable that they will make going for them a dps increase over going deep frost. If that doesn't happen, then we will have frost "fixed" as DWing (and once again, I think it sucks but I also think the world can't care less about it). But if it does, than we will be back to the 32/39 stage of "frost" dw builds that are more about UH than frost.
About builds, both of those you linked are reasonable.
I was flirting with the idea of (assuming you have an enhancement shaman in the raid):
I feel the very early tiers of UH are more "intense" for Dw than the early Blood ones (blood talents would be amazing if you could get to the lower ones, tho).
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
I don't see how BP rotations would suddenly be better than DRM rotations. The fundamentals behind the DRM build are not really changing. 6xIT will still generate far more RP to fuel more FS.
I don't see how BP rotations would suddenly be better than DRM rotations. The fundamentals behind the DRM build are not really changing. 6xIT will still generate far more RP to fuel more FS.
Have to agree with you. If they don't fundamentally change something with either the it glyph or something else in regards to RP-gen, then a IT-spam build will still be top dps. (only with 5% higher white dmg portion and 18/53 instead of 20/51).
But I'm not quite so sure if they'll really keep it like that.
Have to agree with you. If they don't fundamentally change something with either the it glyph or something else in regards to RP-gen, then a IT-spam build will still be top dps. (only with 5% higher white dmg portion and 18/53 instead of 20/51).
But I'm not quite so sure if they'll really keep it like that.
I'm not really sure; we need to see how hard the new BS will hit.
FS is taking a 5% damage reduction. BS is getting an (apparently huge damage increase). We may be close to the point where FS doesn't make up anymore for using IT instead of actually damaging strikes, using UP over BP, using one disease instead of 2, losing half the bonus damage from diseases, using half the tier 8 bonus, etc.
The build I linked allows for a frost DW specc with 20 sec diseases, Necrosis, BCB and threat reduction.
So to recap, the IT spamm build needs to generate enough RP to make up for:
- 15% damage loss from UP over BP (even if UP doesn't stack badly with DW)
- Blood Plague
- the damage increase from the second disease on all strikes
- the damage increase from the tier 8 set bonus
- having to use 6 IT instead of OB/BS who will do substantially more damage as DW
- (Necrosis)
- (BCB)
considering that FS is nerfed in damage.
It's very early to say, but the IT build MAY fall behind for DW'ers.
EDIT: just to clarify my position futher, if you go and look at the theorycraft in the two DW dedicated thread, most of the people who are currently DW (as UH) are saying "Ok, interesting but I think my specc will stay superior".
If theorycraft gets to that point, ToT will have the following effects:
- it won't benefit DW'ers, because UH DW will pull ahead of Frost DW or be equivalent
- it will kill all hope than Frost gets fixed for 2h users, because if Frost DW has a performance that is above Frost 2h, or competitive with other 2h builds. then buffing Frost for 2h users while keeping DW in check will be a pain.
If Blizzard wants to make Frost the DW tree, then we should expect a lot of reworking of the entire tree; ToT isn't likely to cut it.
Last edited by Valtiel : 06/22/09 at 6:39 AM.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
I really don't see early unholy being better than blood. The only thing in unholy that will scale better with DW than 2h is necrosis. Right now as 2h frost, white swings account for 18-20% of my damage on most fights. Let's say for the sake of argument that my auto attack damage increases by 50% when dual wielding (it won't). It then becomes 25-27% of my damage, meaning necrosis works out to about a 5% damage increase, or ~1% per point. Good, but not worth going down the tree solely for that. Given that nothing else in the early unholy talents will perform better with DW than 2h, and nobody specs frost/unholy right now, and I think there's your answer.
I think based on the current notes, we'll either see 18/51/2 IT spam or 15/51/3+2 IT+PS builds. Which one really depends on what the blood strike change actually is. Either it's not good enough to beat out IT spam, or it is and subversion gets even better. Looking at the unholy talents:
Vicious Strikes - waste of points, my average PS is a little over 1k.
Virulence - nice, but already taken by frost/blood builds.
Epidemic - not useful for any build with the IT glyph.
Ravenous Dead - less AP per point than bladed armor, and you won't have a permaghoul.
Blood-caked Blade - doesn't scale better with DW since 3.0.8.
Am I missing something? Basically, ToT as described is a huge change in that it single-handedly makes DW deep frost viable. It's not a huge change mechanically, as it's essentially the 2h frost playstyle, now with improved AP scaling. Barring more changes, I just don't think DW frost specs are going to be as radically different from 2h specs as you seem to.
Edit: Hopefully fixed the early morning fail math.
Cami: less than 1,050k dmg on Ignis (he has 800k dmg on adds)
Lazzek: less then 1,200k dmg on Ignis
Mnylol: less than 1,200k dmg on Ignis
Feel free to check that list. There's basically nobody over 1,100k dmg on Ignis. This means that Unholy DW is, at the moment, doing about 140% of the single target damage (of course the figure would change if some of the top 20 dps was lost on artificially inflating damage with AoE abilities, but the difference is probably negligible considering the HB-OB damage relationship) of Frost 2h on Ignis, which is one of the cleanest single target fights to evaluate.
If we go into the details, we will see that even doubling the strike damage for Fargom's abilities we don't make up for the Ghoul dps, the Garg dps, BCB and Necrosis and so on.
At this time what we need to evaluate is: will ToT be a 30-40% increase over 2h Frost dps on single targets? If the answer is "yes", then Frost will become the DW build. If the answer is no, UH will stay the DW build of choice.
If anyone has any theorycraft showing that DW will make Frost's single target dps skyrocket, I'd like to see it. In that parse, white damage is only 21% of Fargom's damage. I don't see it being much more for a deep frost build, with current talents.
It's still all theorycraft, but what we are seeing at the moment is that unless Frost DW is gonna be massively superior to what Frost 2h currently is, it's quite unlikely that it will be an upgrade over UH DW - as it is now.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
I'm just going to point out that the change to frost strike in pvp is going to hurt a lot more than people realize. It's not the damage or being DW that will affect it, it's that frost strike can be dodged/blocked/parried that is going to hurt FS spam the most in pvp. Frost may still be viable, but it's taking a heavy hit with that change (in pvp).
Cami: less than 1,050k dmg on Ignis (he has 800k dmg on adds)
Lazzek: less then 1,200k dmg on Ignis
Mnylol: less than 1,200k dmg on Ignis
Feel free to check that list. There's basically nobody over 1,100k dmg on Ignis. This means that Unholy DW is, at the moment, doing about 140% of the single target damage (of course the figure would change if some of the top 20 dps was lost on artificially inflating damage with AoE abilities, but the difference is probably negligible considering the HB-OB damage relationship) of Frost 2h on Ignis, which is one of the cleanest single target fights to evaluate.
If we go into the details, we will see that even doubling the strike damage for Fargom's abilities we don't make up for the Ghoul dps, the Garg dps, BCB and Necrosis and so on.
At this time what we need to evaluate is: will ToT be a 30-40% increase over 2h Frost dps on single targets? If the answer is "yes", then Frost will become the DW build. If the answer is no, UH will stay the DW build of choice.
If anyone has any theorycraft showing that DW will make Frost's single target dps skyrocket, I'd like to see it. In that parse, white damage is only 21% of Fargom's damage. I don't see it being much more for a deep frost build, with current talents.
It's still all theorycraft, but what we are seeing at the moment is that unless Frost DW is gonna be massively superior to what Frost 2h currently is, it's quite unlikely that it will be an upgrade over UH DW - as it is now.
Why is this relevant? The question is not "Will ToT make us better DW DKs than Unholy DW is now?" The question is "Will ToT make DW Frost do more dps than 2h Frost?" I'd wager that most of us are Frost to provide the melee haste buff to our raid. My concern is with doing as much dps as Frost as I can. The PTRs aren't even up yet, and it's clear that Bliz is set on making DW Frost viable and will most likely make as many changes as they need to to make it so. Unholy DW's numbers are irrelevant in this regard.
Until the PTRs go up all we can do is speculate. Using the possible numbers for FS and OB provided by Aatis, we can expect anywhere from a 3% decrease in FS/7% decrease in OB to a modest to substantial increase in both (as high as 10-20% in some cases). Personally I expect to see the small decrease in strike damage, which the increase in white damage and AP scaling should more than make up for. We won't know until the PTRs go up and we can figure out the exact formula for ToT strikes, but right now things look optimistic.
Why is this relevant? The question is not "Will ToT make us better DW DKs than Unholy DW is now?" The question is "Will ToT make DW Frost do more dps than 2h Frost?" I'd wager that most of us are Frost to provide the melee haste buff to our raid. My concern is with doing as much dps as Frost as I can. The PTRs aren't even up yet, and it's clear that Bliz is set on making DW Frost viable and will most likely make as many changes as they need to to make it so. Unholy DW's numbers are irrelevant in this regard.
Until the PTRs go up all we can do is speculate. Using the possible numbers for FS and OB provided by Aatis, we can expect anywhere from a 3% decrease in FS/7% decrease in OB to a modest to substantial increase in both (as high as 10-20% in some cases). Personally I expect to see the small decrease in strike damage, which the increase in white damage and AP scaling should more than make up for. We won't know until the PTRs go up and we can figure out the exact formula for ToT strikes, but right now things look optimistic.
The answer to that question will, unless some disasterous implementation effect cripples ToT, yes. If that is your concern, I think you can rest well: I can't possibly see a reason why DW Frost can do less dps than 2h Frost. Of course, depending on the FS nerf, 3.2 DW Frost may (unlikely) do less dps than 3.1 2h Frost, but it's almost guaranteed that it will do more dps than 3.2 2h Frost.
On the second point, I would assume a lot of people play Frost because they like Frost. Enhancement shamans aren't that hard to come by, and Imp Icy Talons is a very small improvement over untalented WF anyways.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
Blood Caked Blade works for both weapons. That nerf was reversed. It actually works better now than it did then.
It is very likely that it is no lower than 35 points in Frost. Forcing Frost to take every single PvE talent in the tree just to get to 40 would just make every PVE talent in Frost mandatory. That isn't the way they like to build talent trees. Placing it at 30 would give more options but that opens up the option of Crypt Fever. Given the way Obliterate scales with three diseases, it would scale far better. In which case, you would have the odd situation where Unholy DKs wouldn't get invited because their Ebon Plaguebringer would overwrite the Crypt Fever.
Given the convenience of putting it at the 35 point and the above argument, it's most likely a 35 point talent. Just deep enough that the best talents of other trees aren't available. Putting it higher than 30 points would be awesome but a disaster for Blizzard to try to balance. As people have mentioned, both Unholy and Blood are better suited and would quickly make the tree just a support tree for DW.
Where the point in AMZ is actually 1 point in Desecration for the snare. Obliterate would be hitting for 8K+ a hit, Blood Strike would be hitting for monstrous numbers, Death Coil damage would be even higher with new Unholy Blight, you get the picture.
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.
While the 5% frost strike weapon damage is nerfed, keep min mind you will pickup a 2nd weapon enchant. Most likely, razorfrost. On a fight where you can keep this up, this will increase all your frost damage by a flat 5% (and tack on the negligible 2% weapon damage as well).
Last edited by Saabik : 06/22/09 at 8:42 PM.
Reason: Grammar
For one of the proposed DW builds with 3.1 (OB based, deep unholy build) it was theorized that it would be higher dps to use Razorice on the MH and FC on OH. The reason being the 2% damage would apply to MH strikes as well. We may see this utilized in 3.2 for frost DW as well as a major proportion of damage would come from MH strikes.
as a weird quirk I was playing with today, Razorice doesn't seem to be at all relevant to which weapon its enchanted on right now in regards to damage.
testing on my 2 swords [Serilas, Blood Blade of Invar One-Arm] and [Void Sabre] on a target dummy, I found that the razorice proc was doing damage based on whichever weapon is currently equipped in your mainhand. In the situation of slow/fast that I have, it meant that razorice on my Void Sabre in the offhand did more damage than when Void was equipped in my mainhand, and in either case the damage was significantly lower than 2% of what I was hitting for, and seemed to be about 2% of the base damage of the weapon (capping out at 7 when void was equipped mainhand).
This issue was apparent on Lichbane as well, not that there is any reason to use it, but using lichbane/razorice with a slow/fast weapon will result in higher damage procs from both enchants than using fast/slow, and procs from both came out to about the same damage (very slightly higher from razorice, I assume this is due to the stacking debuff)
Also I believe the debuff placed by razorice was actually increased to 2% per stack now to a maximum of 10%, although I could be wrong, this was done when it was changed to only affect the death knight instead of the whole raid.
I've noticed in a lot of these discussions that nobody is mentioning that BotN is now only 10% for 3pts instead of 15% for 5pts. This along with the 5% nerf directly to FS is an overall 10% nerf to the ability, not to mention the 5% hit to BS. Just thought I would mention it since I see a lot of posts using the 5% nerf number for FS.
I was thinking about what the buff to BS could mean and was wondering about how a frost build with a blood rotation might do.
I was thinking that it would be similar to IT spam, but use BS (similar to how HS is used now for blood). I don't know the numbers, but it looks like BS might be doing more single target dps then HS in 3.2 (and glyphed)
You would also improvise OB for DS and get a damage and crit bonus (with applied diseases)
and, instead of DC you would be throwing FS, a huge damage imporvement. They both consume relatively the same amount of rune power and with the blood rotation I have going now im lucky to get off 2 (in blood presence) before the GCD has another rune ready to use.
I personally like using glyph of disease to keep the disease up ( i know its not popular, but it gives me an extra HS per rotation and helps in AOE), and was thinking a build might look like this...
I was thinking about what the buff to BS could mean and was wondering about how a frost build with a blood rotation might do.
I was thinking that it would be similar to IT spam, but use BS (similar to how HS is used now for blood). I don't know the numbers, but it looks like BS might be doing more single target dps then HS in 3.2 (and glyphed)
You would also improvise OB for DS and get a damage and crit bonus (with applied diseases)
and, instead of DC you would be throwing FS, a huge damage imporvement. They both consume relatively the same amount of rune power and with the blood rotation I have going now im lucky to get off 2 (in blood presence) before the GCD has another rune ready to use.
I personally like using glyph of disease to keep the disease up ( i know its not popular, but it gives me an extra HS per rotation and helps in AOE), and was thinking a build might look like this...
again, not saying im right, just wondering what everyones thoughts on this might be...
Whats the rotation and glyphs? Giving up IT glyph will probably be a dps loss, as will giving up FS glyph, as will giving up OB glyph. Subbing BS for IT will net less RP, meaning less FS, and probably less dps. I guess we'll have to see how much BS got buffed.
06/21/09, 5:24 AM
