The problem I found without the extended disease durations (17/51/3) was that the rotation used too many gcd's on rune abilities and didn't leave enough to use Rime procs and all of your Runic Power at the same time. I guess it's not that big a deal, and you can prioritize things, but I kept seeing people using Unholy Presence with that build and I boggled.
At any rate, while I agree Frost is being balanced on the ptr with Dual Weild in mind, I don't know that it will really change our rotation much at all, assuming you're using the rotation I do and spec something like this to more complement dual wield:
Getting Ravenous Dead and Night of the Dead gives your Risen Ghoul a decent up time and survivability, as well as increased dps and more Army of the Dead uptime. Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade that really shine with dual wield. And the early Unholy talents that kept my rotation what it was.
This is assuming you're taking Improved Icy Talons for melee haste for your raid of course. You can modify for a few minor dps upgrades if you remove that portion of the tree and put points in Merc Combat, Deathchill, Endless Winter, and Icy Reach 1/2, Lichborne, or Hungering Cold instead.
They just changed the patch notes and cut the BS bonus per disease down to 25% (lower than the 50% it was at, but higher than the 12.5% on live,) and then increased frost fever and blood plague's damage by 15% each. Same concept of making single-disease rotations less viable (which I suppose was the idea,) but less damage from BS itself.
I'm pretty sure that the answer to this would be no due to the large difference in RP generation, but for a DW frost spec would using your death'd blood runes on OB be better than using them on two ITs to fuel more frost strikes be better now in light of the nerfs FS has gotten?
(EDIT: to clarify, I'm referring to the double-disease IT -> PS -> OB -> BS -> BS -> DUMP -> OB -> IT ->PS -> IT -> IT -> DUMP rotation, not the ITX6.)
I have my reservations about how effective it would be to use a bloodstrike spam build, the main reason I asked is it seems with the recent buff to it (even at 25%) that bloodstrike gives you the best weapon damage per rune used of any of our strikes now. If nothing else 2xbloodstrike would appear to beat 1xobliterate hands down for damage output. The big question for it would be, as you pointed out, runic power generation and the fact that frost strike is being nerfed in 3 ways, weapon damage %, +damage modifier and can be dodged now(less an issue for pve although it may change exp stat weights for frost some now). I have been trying to get on the ptr all day to check the various dw specs out but have been stuck at character retrieval so I am left doing math hammer and theorizing for th meantime.
I have my reservations about how effective it would be to use a bloodstrike spam build, the main reason I asked is it seems with the recent buff to it (even at 25%) that bloodstrike gives you the best weapon damage per rune used of any of our strikes now. If nothing else 2xbloodstrike would appear to beat 1xobliterate hands down for damage output. The big question for it would be, as you pointed out, runic power generation and the fact that frost strike is being nerfed in 3 ways, weapon damage %, +damage modifier and can be dodged now(less an issue for pve although it may change exp stat weights for frost some now). I have been trying to get on the ptr all day to check the various dw specs out but have been stuck at character retrieval so I am left doing math hammer and theorizing for th meantime.
There's also the Sigil nerf, which will arguably be harsher than the 5% weapondamage cut.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
...Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade that really shine with dual wield...
Regarding Necrosis / BCB for dual wield
From my logs as of last night using a DW-unholy build I don't see Necrosis or BCB putting out quality damage. My evidence is from our logs of IC attempts (you can check the other bosses here, very similar results minus flame leviathan for obvious reasons).
I'm running 4/5 Necrosis and 3/3 BCB(BCS). Necrosis was 4.1% of my damage and BCB was 2.1% of my damage. Remember, this is with dual wielding. Necrosis has a decent point-to-damage ratio, but BCB is really lacking. I was using a 2.5 speed main hand, and in unholy presence most of the time (excluding frost pres on the little guy from IC).
Edit: On a side note, based on this information I will be dropping a point from BCB and putting it into Necrosis as it is a better investment.
Edit2: Fargom's parse shows his Necrosis at 4% and BCB at 3%, with 5/5 and 3/3 respectively. This is contrary to my data, which could be contributed to a bit of RNG. His data would suggest BCB is a more sound investment than Necrosis.
The conclusion still being that Necrosis and BCB do not add that much to dual wielding.
PTR
I was able to log in last night and test a bit. I ran a traditional DRM frost spec, picking up appropriate dual wield talents and was pulling around 3700 DPS on the test dummy (all tests: Horn, no UA/racial, heroic dummy, from behind, with merciless combat and dummy at 1%). I tried several rotation variations, all had similar results. While being disconnected I often lost those data points, hopefully I will be able to test some more tonight and keep them.
Compared to my 6xIT spec on live, which I'm getting around 3100 DPS (all tests: Horn, no UA/racial, heroic dummy, from behind, with merciless combat and dummy at 1%).
One of the main goals I think Blizzard was trying to do is shift our damage away from frost strike and into the rest of our abilities, which the PTR is a huge success of. I'll try to post some recount breakdowns from tonight's testing, but the general trend was lower frost strike damage, a lot more blood strike damage, and minor increases to plague strike, diseases, and obliterate.
I posted my findings in the 3.2 DW thread. They're also on the previous page here, but I made some stupid errors while testing without sleep that have been corrected in the new post.
Regarding Necrosis / BCB for dual wield
From my logs as of last night using a DW-unholy build I don't see Necrosis or BCB putting out quality damage.
You have to remember that typically DW strength has been better scaling auto-attack damage along skills and talents related to increased amount of melee hits.
In your parse miss rate is 16.9%, melee damage "only" 27% of your total damage. With those figures necrosis and bcb will be always more or less produce 1% dps increase per point. I don't see really any significant difference with 2h or dw playstyle so far. Increasing melee damage over 30+% will also increase overall dps of necrosis and bcb. (plus of your old spec does 3100dps against dummy and new spec 3700dps while necrosis and bcb would yield still only 1% increase per point they're still yielding more dps with dw obviously)
More important question is that does concentrating more on auto-attack damage aka stacking hit out weigth current strike based damage or not. Or whether 6xBS/6xIT rotations are somehow magically good with DW.
You have to remember that typically DW strength has been better scaling auto-attack damage along skills and talents related to increased amount of melee hits.
In your parse miss rate is 16.9%, melee damage "only" 27% of your total damage. With those figures necrosis and bcb will be always more or less produce 1% dps increase per point. I don't see really any significant difference with 2h or dw playstyle so far. Increasing melee damage over 30+% will also increase overall dps of necrosis and bcb. (plus of your old spec does 3100dps against dummy and new spec 3700dps while necrosis and bcb would yield still only 1% increase per point they're still yielding more dps with dw obviously)
More important question is that does concentrating more on auto-attack damage aka stacking hit out weigth current strike based damage or not. Or whether 6xBS/6xIT rotations are somehow magically good with DW.
Considering 3.2., I dont see any specc/rotation dealing 30%+ white damage. Ihave two 10man hardmode weapons and i am at 25-27% melee damage, down to 20-22% on some speccs(yeah, on dummy, i know those numbers shouldnt get too much consideration). We yet do not have the possibility to test this in raid, but i do not see my melee dps going up to 35-40% raidbuffed even togehter with necrosis and BCB(like it was speculated several times before).
The conclusion still being that Necrosis and BCB do not add that much to dual wielding.
PTR
I was able to log in last night and test a bit. I ran a traditional DRM frost spec, picking up appropriate dual wield talents and was pulling around 3700 DPS on the test dummy (all tests: Horn, no UA/racial, heroic dummy, from behind, with merciless combat and dummy at 1%). I tried several rotation variations, all had similar results. While being disconnected I often lost those data points, hopefully I will be able to test some more tonight and keep them.
Compared to my 6xIT spec on live, which I'm getting around 3100 DPS (all tests: Horn, no UA/racial, heroic dummy, from behind, with merciless combat and dummy at 1%).
One of the main goals I think Blizzard was trying to do is shift our damage away from frost strike and into the rest of our abilities, which the PTR is a huge success of. I'll try to post some recount breakdowns from tonight's testing, but the general trend was lower frost strike damage, a lot more blood strike damage, and minor increases to plague strike, diseases, and obliterate.
So, if I got it right, you run the OB OB BS BS > ITx6 rotation?
If the results are still so good, I wouldn't be surprised if more changes were incoming. This rotation not only uses only 1 disease (which seem to be against Blizz's philosophy by now) but also defies the entire notion of ToT since you have half your rotation not using it.
It will be interesting to see if Blizzard will tolerate that all their changes and fixes are still inferior to the Icy Touch Glyph. On one hand, it would be extremely easy to push the change by nerfing the glyph. They seem to be taking the panoramic ride by nerfing FS in 3 different ways and buffing diseases instead.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
I did some preliminary testing last night with DW and tried both the IT machine gun spec and the old 2 Disease IT>PS>OB>BS>BS :: OB>OB>OB weaving FS's rotation and the latter came out ahead by about 300 DPS every time out of (5) 5 minute tests each. I have a strong feeling the double disease rotations will continue to get stronger with the added disease damage, bump to BS damage per disease and then with the 4pcT9 bonus as well allowing those to crit. I was constantly seeing around 3.6k DPS with IT Machine Gun spec and around 3.9-4k DPS with the double disease.
Has *anyone* EVER gotten good results from OB OB BS BS > ITx6? Because whenever I tried it, it was absolutely atrociously bad and I see no reason for anyone to ever use that horrible rotation other than they hate the concept of having a dynamic priority system and don't like to actually think when they play frost.
Everything about it is bad, you don't get your TS buff until the second half, you use one disease instead of two when Blizz has buffed diseases considerably, you aren't getting the benefit of ToT for the majority of your rotation, etc. It is a poorly constructed rotation in 3.1 and will continue to be even poorer in 3.2.
Edit: Traveggie your personal results match what I assume Blizz was intending when they made the changes to Frost. While ITx6 done properly is the hardest system to wrap your head around and execute, it was/is kind of gimmicky in terms of what it relies on.
BTW, have you attempted to proc Rime by only using an offhand weapon? If Rime procs from both hands then that seals the deal IMO for ITx6 death....long live double disease OB spam builds!
Moving to PTR changes, it would seem now Frost is balanced around DW and DW only. The cumulative nerfs are going to completely destroy any viability Frost 2h had.
Do we have any hard facts to back this up? I have not been able to get on the PTR but a question we need to answer in this thread is:
Can 2H Frost stay competitive with DW Frost? The particular build in question should not matter all that much. If the three 2H Frost builds come out short of whichever DW Frost builds are being tested in the new 3.2 DW thread then that should be enough. If they aren't, then I'd say 2H Frost will remain competitive. Whether or not one is optimal over the other can only be decided once we have access to T9 and the better itemized weapons from the Coliseum and all the numbers have been pegged down.
I was on the PTR today testing out the ITx6 rotation (using basically the same spec as 2h but swapping points to ToT and NoCS) and noticed that Death Runes have gotten smarter, making the DRM/BotN rotation significantly simpler if that ends up being the way to go. Basically if you have all death runes and cast Obliterate, it will use U/F runes instead of U/U runes which leaves your rotation slightly messed up.
Do we have any hard facts to back this up? I have not been able to get on the PTR but a question we need to answer in this thread is:
Can 2H Frost stay competitive with DW Frost? The particular build in question should not matter all that much. If the three 2H Frost builds come out short of whichever DW Frost builds are being tested in the new 3.2 DW thread then that should be enough. If they aren't, then I'd say 2H Frost will remain competitive. Whether or not one is optimal over the other can only be decided once we have access to T9 and the better itemized weapons from the Coliseum and all the numbers have been pegged down.
My reasoning is simple: it's questionable to say that Frost 2h was competitive in 3.1. It had some viability in aoe situations, but generally it was extremely inferior in single target dps to both Blood and Unholy. The only specc that managed to get better (even if still sensibly inferior to blood, unholy and dw unholy) was the IT spamm build.
The IT spamm build relied on Frost Strike and the Vengeful Heart sigil - Frost Strike is nerfed for 10%, and the Sigil is nerfed for about 70% (probably balanced around DW now too).
To make up for that, the Blood Strike buffs need to provide over 2 strikes essentially the equivalent of 10% of 6-7 frost strikes (considering Killing Machine too) and the damage loss on the Sigil. Given that it's essentially impossible for this to happen, and that if it was true, we would move to a DRM BS spamm build, I think the theory for now is that Frost 2h won't be "viable" - if it ever was.
Has *anyone* EVER gotten good results from OB OB BS BS > ITx6? Because whenever I tried it, it was absolutely atrociously bad and I see no reason for anyone to ever use that horrible rotation other than they hate the concept of having a dynamic priority system and don't like to actually think when they play frost.
Every frost rotation is a priority system. You won't ever get good results with fixed rotations with any specc. I think people write that rotation down like that simply because it's a general overlook of the rune usage over 20 seconds, but I don't think anyone uses them in that order.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
I don't know if you read the latest from GC on DKs (it's on WoR in case), but this:
What we are going to do with dual-wield in 3.2 is just provide the Frost tree with the talents necessary to prop-up dual wielding, including a new talent that lets Frost Strike, Death Strike, Obliterate etc. hit with both weapons. This will likely mean that Blood and Unholy dual-wield specs just won’t work anymore. It also carries the risk that all Frost death knights feel like they have to go dual-wield. This latter part isn’t necessarily a goal, but could be the outcome. We think in this case our only option is to remove some player choice in order to provide a real choice in other areas.
seems to be the nail in the coffin for Frost 2h.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
Yeah, I must agree with Valtiel. Frost was being held up by virtue of a single item drop and/or spamming IT. 2H Frost come 3.2 does not appear to be an attractive or potentially viable option at all.
As it stands right now, there is nothing about 2H Frost that would make it better than DW and DW is pulling ahead quite easily on all tests. 2H may still be "viable" if "viable" is not defined by optimal but to most of us we're seeking the top DPS possible. From my tests, the machine gun IT spec in DW was pulling around 3.7k, where I pull roughly the exact same DPS on live as 2H IT machine gun spec.
When I switched to a dual disease traditional rotation with epidemic, I pulled around 4k each time over several 5 minute tests each, with only HoW and no cooldowns, ghoul or additional debuffs on the target. The 2 disease rotations should now scale much much better as well so I don't see any reason to go back to 1 disease for any reason at this point in close to BiS gear. The 2 disease rotation should make more use out of armor pen and raid buffs/debuffs as well.
As it stands right now, there is nothing about 2H Frost that would make it better than DW and DW is pulling ahead quite easily on all tests. 2H may still be "viable" if "viable" is not defined by optimal but to most of us we're seeking the top DPS possible. From my tests, the machine gun IT spec in DW was pulling around 3.7k, where I pull roughly the exact same DPS on live as 2H IT machine gun spec.
Viable was defined earlier in this thread as follows:
A spec/rotation will be considered 'viable' when it's average DPS output over a variety of different encounters approaches or surpasses the output of the current 'top preforming' specs or rotations. Any spec/rotation that is consistently out preformed by other rotations/specs is deemed to be 'not viable' for all intents and purposes within this thread.
As irrelevant as it may be now, I can confirm what Kirstel was saying above by OB heavy 2 disease rotations in blood presence.
I finally completed my 4t8 set and got Aesir's Edge, so I moved back to an OB heavy rotation, and I need to say that the results are quite impressive. Tonight we did Uld 10 and I had a few high points of single target dps (5880 on Kologarn "with open arms" and 5.9k on Auriaya "crazycatlady", so basically barely any aoe cast) that I wasn't expecting.
The scaling of OB with the setbonus is more solid that I thought, and make the single target dps of the rotation (ps it ob bs bs > ps it ob ob) match if not exceed, in my experience, the dps of the IT spamm build.
It's extremely anedoctal evidence, and will be outdated very soon, but what makes it interesting is that considering the 3.2 changes, having a switch from UP to BP may become more and more interesting. If FS damage's gets reduced, the balance of the scale may move from having free GCD for extra FS to higher damage on beefier strikes. Tonight I had FSs in the region of 14-15k on Thorim hard and an average of 11870 for OB crits over the night. The most interesting thing about the Kologarn and Auriaya reports is that FS was barely 25% of my dps. I'm sort of testing in preparation of the FS nerfs, and if the disease scaling will be solid enough, Frost 2h may not be as dead as I was expecting, but it may change radically in the "top" specc.
It won't still match the viability requirements we set for the topic, however. Decreased enfasis on FS makes DW even more attractive.
12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.
Well, despite what you say (Valtiel), I find myself fairly consistently out performing Unholy spec'd DK's on single target, and comparable, or better, depending on how much setup time for aoe dps (bursty is better for Frost). There's quite a bit of evidence in my world of logs reports in my previous post to back that up (Seratha <- me 'Frost', Sinzar 'Unholy' <- when he dps's). Gearing for us is pretty close too, so I'm not just pulling numbers out of the air.
As for comparing to Blood single target. I don't raid with a Blood DK almost ever anymore, so it's hard to say. My previous guild used one and the only fight he ever beat me on was occasionally XT (burst on the heart). So, as far as DK dps specs go, I think 2H Frost is pretty potent already.
With the Dual Wield additions, I suspect the overall damage output of Frost will go up a touch, despite the nerfs to Frost Strike. Those nerfs, in fact, might even make the [Sigil of Awareness] stronger than the overly nerfed [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart]. That being for an obliterate heavy, epidemic, double disease build.
To be honest, I don't think 2-handers will be very viable in Frost anymore, but at the same time, I always enjoyed Dual Wielding anyways, and don't mind the migration to less contested 1-handers (rogues mostly). I'll be logging over onto the PTR and giving 2h and DW Frost a go over there in raids hopefully relatively soon and will try and get some parses to find out how it performs, and whether it's up to par compared to Blood and Unholy.
The main point I wanted to make in this post though is this: Frost is not subpar by any means currently (atleast my build anyways), and I don't think shifting to Dual Wielding in Frost is going to hurt that trend.
I think everyone will grab new ilvl245 sigil - that is everyone but Blood, I wonder if this is intended or maybe they will make Blood using Obliterate again. Also moving damage from FS to BS, increasing disease damage and 4x T9 bonus should be enough to eliminate single disease rotations.
Real question is if 2h Frost will be viable or will die like BM Hunters did with 3.1. Any buffs to 2h Frost would most likely make DW Frost OP so I would not be optimist.
As irrelevant as it may be now, I can confirm what Kirstel was saying above by OB heavy 2 disease rotations in blood presence.
I finally completed my 4t8 set and got Aesir's Edge, so I moved back to an OB heavy rotation, and I need to say that the results are quite impressive. Tonight we did Uld 10 and I had a few high points of single target dps (5880 on Kologarn "with open arms" and 5.9k on Auriaya "crazycatlady", so basically barely any aoe cast) that I wasn't expecting.
The scaling of OB with the setbonus is more solid that I thought, and make the single target dps of the rotation (ps it ob bs bs > ps it ob ob) match if not exceed, in my experience, the dps of the IT spamm build. . . I'm sort of testing in preparation of the FS nerfs, and if the disease scaling will be solid enough, Frost 2h may not be as dead as I was expecting, but it may change radically in the "top" spec.
It won't still match the viability requirements we set for the topic, however. Decreased enfasis on FS makes DW even more attractive.
I have been working furiously on this rotation and comparing it to both the IT x6 spam and also the same rotation only used in Unholy Presence. What I have found, however, is that there is no need to refresh Icy Touch and Plague Strike during your 2nd phase of the 12 rune rotation, the 2 diseases should be up already (even in Blood Presence), that you can do 2 Obliterates. Instead of going the 17/51/3 route, I went 13/51/7, taking 4% off of dark convictin and made my diseases last 6 seconds longer, so the rotation is now IT, PS, OB, BS, BS > Dump < OB, OB, OB. Using only 3 double rune attacks in the second phase is a lot easier on our GCD in Blood Presence, and as this is already a tight rotation because of that, I prefer it over using 2 IT's from the death runes for extra runic power. During trash mobs I actually switch to Unholy Presence and just go crazy, then switch back to Blood Presence for the longer, single target DPS races. That's the beauty, in my eyes, of this spec, is that you're only losing 4% crit so switching presences throughout fights is never really an issue.
Personally, since we rely so much on KM procs and it's randomness, the -4% crit is really not as damaging as I would have thought it to be. Sure, regular Frost Strikes may not be critting as often, but if you are good with your rotation and Killing Machine procs, it should not hurt your dps. I am still working on my 4pc but as you have stated, the set bonus is nice, especially for this rotation where using Obliterate happens 4 times. To me, this feels like the sort of rotation that Blizzard would WANT us to go, is it not? Using the heavy-hitting, 2 rune attacks in blood presence (just an opinion)? I think even with the new patch notes so far, this rotation will still have it's merit. They're nerfing FS's main damage by 5%, 40% of my main damage was from FS (might be different using this new rotation), so 2% overall dps loss... meh.
I have been working furiously on this rotation and comparing it to both the IT x6 spam and also the same rotation only used in Unholy Presence. What I have found, however, is that there is no need to refresh Icy Touch and Plague Strike during your 2nd phase of the 12 rune rotation, the 2 diseases should be up already (even in Blood Presence), that you can do 2 Obliterates. Instead of going the 17/51/3 route, I went 13/51/7, taking 4% off of dark convictin and made my diseases last 6 seconds longer, so the rotation is now IT, PS, OB, BS, BS > Dump < OB, OB, OB. Using only 3 double rune attacks in the second phase is a lot easier on our GCD in Blood Presence, and as this is already a tight rotation because of that, I prefer it over using 2 IT's from the death runes for extra runic power. During trash mobs I actually switch to Unholy Presence and just go crazy, then switch back to Blood Presence for the longer, single target DPS races. That's the beauty, in my eyes, of this spec, is that you're only losing 4% crit so switching presences throughout fights is never really an issue.
Personally, since we rely so much on KM procs and it's randomness, the -4% crit is really not as damaging as I would have thought it to be. Sure, regular Frost Strikes may not be critting as often, but if you are good with your rotation and Killing Machine procs, it should not hurt your dps. I am still working on my 4pc but as you have stated, the set bonus is nice, especially for this rotation where using Obliterate happens 4 times. To me, this feels like the sort of rotation that Blizzard would WANT us to go, is it not? Using the heavy-hitting, 2 rune attacks in blood presence (just an opinion)? I think even with the new patch notes so far, this rotation will still have it's merit. They're nerfing FS's main damage by 5%, 40% of my main damage was from FS (might be different using this new rotation), so 2% overall dps loss... meh.
Have you done any testing on this? I did and FS is a huge nerf at the moment. It is equal in dps to OB now, in fact with Epidemic there is a larger loss in dps than without Epidemic. The wasted points in Imp Plague strike are very evident. You lose a few FS Spams with a reduced Disease duration, but OB/BS are increased in dps due to dual disease and more than make up for the fact. I have not found it to be difficult to change. And FS crits are alot more than 2 percent dps loss in 5 tests of 5 minutes each. I did not once get a 9k crit the highest I got was 5k. OB crit for 6k and BS for 4k. The spec I used was 15/55+1
06/24/09, 4:41 PM
