Frozen Blows -- Frost DPS (Updated 06.11.09) - Page 2

Lynri · 05/20/09, 4:13 PM

No. Since HB comes off cd by itself in 8 seconds, giving more then enough time to use HB again before diseases drop. Frost fever has a natural 15second duration. Blood Plague does nothing but increase OB damage and is only affected by universal talents like Black Ice and Tundra Stalker.

It's not worth the runes to use IT + PS to refresh diseases, actually lowers dps as both are the weakest abilities of their type (IT is now one of the weakest spells while PS is weakest strike). Also ruins the point of the glyph truthfully. if you're going to use IT to refresh FF might as well run Glyph of Icy Touch instead.

Blood Plague can either help or hinder depending on gear itemization. It's not all that amazing without the 4set t8 bonus and even then it's pretty lackluster compared to Unholy. (Though admittedly the legs and helm are quite strong slot wise).

waffletimeyo · 05/20/09, 4:22 PM

Originally Posted by Erekose

This discussion is (or should be) focused on what is the best spec/priority/rotation/build what have you for Ulduar in post-t7 gear. Darkside has been kind enough to summarize some stuff about the HB rotation, and he probably will expand on his rotation section once we give him enough time to update, but that's where it should end (at least in this thread). I don't mean to sound like a dick waffle, but if you want information regarding Frost DPS with old gear and an old rotation, you should go read the old thread, theres plenty of stuff there that will answer your questions or lead you in the right direction.

I'm sure the majority of the people who are reading and keeping up with this discussion don't really give a shit about Naxx DPS, or the type of DPS you get if you switch back to old gear. It is a complete waste of time to re-hash old rotations with old gear, and I would appreciate anyone who is reading this to strongly consider *NOT* posting anything if it is a question about old rotations with old gear.

Please keep the discussion current and relevant, it would be amazing to keep this new thread relatively clean for *new* information.

Just to clarify, the purpous of my post was more for people going into the new content who still havent picked up much loot out of it (and I'm fairly sure that dps in that category are still very common right now). I respect that this post is for new content and gear, I just wanted to somewhat clarify whether specs like 17/51/3 etc. require you to have some ulduar loot to be more viable than older specs.

The reason I posted my dps on a naxx fight is that it was the only time recently I've had the chance to dps in any raids at all (since I swapped my dps spec for frost to provide the haste buff). In ulduar, I have yet to get the chance to dps on anything other than trash, so I had nothing else to really guage my dps by and therefore picked a fight out of a recent naxx run that has regular interuptions to dps. As for asking people to see about slapping on some old gear and testing it out, that is just for more evidence for or against gear dependancy.

In any case, I absolutely respect the purpous here and the effort that Darkside puts in to producing excellent guides, and if my posts do indeed violate the purpous of this thread I'm not the type to QQ if you decide to delete all of them.

EDIT: Tonight I got to dps on Hodir using my frost spec, and it was quite dissapointing...only sustained 5k. Last time I dpsed him I was unholy and I sustained about 6.8k. Frost spec definitely gets far more friendly once you pick up a sigil of the vengefull heart, because I think the difference here proves it won't do great otherwise (or at least in my mind it does). If my guild wasnt missing a regular enh shaman, I'd probably be speccing back to unholy on my dps spec until I pick up that sigil.

Veliya · 05/20/09, 4:37 PM

I've had pretty decent success as a single disease build using glyphs of Obliterate, Icy Touch, and Frost Strike, in Unholy Presence, with the 17/51/3 spec.

Granted I usually tank, and am constrained to DPSing on a few fights, but I classically do a rotation of:

Obliterate, BS, Obliterate, IT

Pretty much you are continuously cycling one blood rune as Death for IT, and resetting one to Death. Those Death runes always go to IT, all of your F/U runes go to Unholy, and you only ever HB on Rime Procs, unelss you are in a fight where the AoE damage is beneficial to use. Outside of this I use obviously Frost Strike.

The only down side is that this spec is a super RP hog due to Unholy Presence, but it's managable on most fights if you utilize AMS on cooldown to give you extra RP (running through Mines on Mimiron, through Frozen Blows on Hodir, so on and so forth). It's also insanely beneficial if you can start the pull with a lot of RP by building it up before the fight, or keeping it high from the last trash pull.

The rotation is awkward at the start because you need to get IT up and get your blood runes on alternating cooldowns, but once you get that under control, and get used to using AMS "offensively" as opposed to defensively, it's a pretty solid DPS spec overall. I've been manging to make it work without the four piece T7 pre patch on many fights.

I think this spec's usefulness hinges on the raid damage you take in the fight, and if you can regularly refill your RP through use of AMS - if you can, or if you involve a lot of movement, this is good, if you can't, the HB Glyph single disease rotation is probably better. I really think the spec is better and far more realistic because as long as you are moving or taking extra damage, you don't waste time standing there. It won't be better on a target dummy for sure, Blood Presence would probably look better, but eh, I dunno.

Lynri · 05/20/09, 5:13 PM

Valiya
Blood Presence would alleviate the GCD issues when dealing with Rp generation problems as mentioned. The huge issue was the change from 4set t7/7.5 You used to be able to generate enough rp to fill the gap using Unholy Presence 100% of the time, with the change you can't making Blood > Unholy even if only slightly for that build/rotation.

using BT after the BSx2 allows for the extra OB as well as the continuous death rune generation you've mentioned. Makes the rotation fairly easy to manage too, especially with UA usage. After BT comes off cd you can use it for UA like Unholy do for GF and it doesn't mess up rotation.

Depending on gear for your dps spec you can drop Virulence (as well as raid comp.) If you hit roughly 10-11% hit you'll generally either hit cap for spells or come close enough (with Misery/Imp. FF or the like) that you won't have to worry too much about Virulence leaving the 3 points for other talents (most notably DRM or something along those lines)

Erekose · 05/20/09, 5:20 PM

Originally Posted by waffletimeyo

I'd like to preface this reply with the fact that my DK is a tank, thus I do not get to spend a lot of time in raids experimenting with dps specs/rotations, and my gear isn't the greatest ever (using mostly 10 man/heroic/rep epics with a couple naxx 25 drops, sigil of awareness, and Death's Bite)

That being said, the dps spec I've been working with is in fact 13/51/7, using glyphs for IT, OBl, and FS. Of what dps testing I've done, I've been finding this spec to work best overall for me. The basic rotation I use is IT, PS, OB, BSx2, FS x2, OB x2, FS, OB, FSx2. However, every time KM procs, I break the rotation for FS (unless FF needs to be refreshed). I do not use rime procs because both OB and FS hit harder than HB every time with my current gear, and I never have a time where a GCD goes unused (I could swap to unholy presence, but when I do that I get strings of 2-3 unused GCDs, which blows entirely). I think the best example of dps I've put out with this rotation was about 4.2k on 10 man maexna, with kings, might, a ret paladin, and curse of elements affecting my dps

The reason I think this spec works well for me is that the majority of my yellow hits are crits. The base crit chance on obliterate with my gear and spec is roughly 48%, so roughly 58% on full raid buffs, and most of the frost strikes I land are used with KM (I seem to recall dps breakdown on a training dummy over 15 minutes using this rotation had 71% crit, 29% hit for FS). My reasoning for going for epidemic is for maximizing the amount of OB's I can afford to drop per rotation without letting my diseases drop during RP dumps, since OB is my strongest hit with my current gear.

That being said, I suspect that if indeed 13/51/7 is the strongest frost dps spec for my DK, it is because of gearing. I suspect that if you are working with naxx/maly/OS gear, which I am, this would be when 13/51/7 would be most viable, for several reasons. First, you have the 4 set on T7 providing ample mounts of RP such that you never run out. Second, your best available sigil raises the dammage done by OB. Third (and I'm not quite sure about this one so please correct me if I'm wrong), I suspect FS and HB scale more with gear than OB, since they are not affected by armor. I have absolutely no doubt that as soon as I break my T7 4 set and pick up a sigil of the vengeful heart, I will see much better dps as 17/51/3.

In summary, I suspect that 13/51/7 is a viable spec for death knights with low to mid range gear, while I agree entirely that something along the lines of 17/51/3 or 20/51/0 would be more viable in ulduar gear. Of course, when I get home today, I will be sure to do some testing towards this theory. Also, it would be very helpfull if a dps main could slap on some of their old naxx gear and do some spec testing along these lines, because after all, my main spec is tanking.

Originally Posted by waffletimeyo

Just to clarify, the purpous of my post was more for people going into the new content who still havent picked up much loot out of it (and I'm fairly sure that dps in that category are still very common right now). I respect that this post is for new content and gear, I just wanted to somewhat clarify whether specs like 17/51/3 etc. require you to have some ulduar loot to be more viable than older specs.

That actually is a pretty well worded question and one I haven't seen articulated yet (at least, in a well thought out manner)

One of the rotations I consider to be gear-constrained is the 13/51/7 or 17/51/3 HB glyph solo disease Blood Presence rotation, and unfortunately it doesn't work out (as) well in t8 as it did in t7, specifically due to the loss of additional RP from 4pt7.

The only major difference between Ulduar frost gear and Naxx frost gear (excepting the bonus which I just talked about of course) is the Sigil. Vengeful Heart makes FS so good that it trumps every other ability by a even more significant margin, so going from that the rotations that are RP-rich will most likely perform better.

This probably means that until you get the Sigil, ITx6 may not be as effective as 2x disease IT that has more OBs (benefiting from Awareness).

I will be running tonights raid as ITx6 and will hopefully have an informative parse up by tomorrow. Honestly I don't mind IT glyph having such a big impact on the rotation, its just another choice depending on how you want to min/max your char/spec/build.

As others have already stated, SS glyph completely changes their "rotation" (insert joke about Unholy here), DS glyph somewhat changes how Blood's rotations work (keeping RP reservoir), and if any glyph is "overpowered" I would say it is the FS glyph that allows for 25% more of them.

For all its RP rich awesomeness, ITx6 has its disadvantages (FF clipping, KM eating, etc) to go along with its advantages. It'll be interesting to see which rotation comes out on top for single target dps.

Erekose · 05/20/09, 5:24 PM

Originally Posted by Lynri

Blood Presence would allieviate the GCD issues when dealing with Rp generation problems as mentioned. The huge issue was the change from 4set t7/7.5 You used to be able to generate enough rp to fill the gap using Unholy Presence 100% of the time, with the change you can't making Blood > Unholy even if only slightly for that build/rotation.

What spec/rotation/priority system are you talking about?

Your statements are not worded very well, and are erroneous. With IT glyph and either ITx6 or IT PS BS BS OB - OB IT IT OB style rotations you are much better off in Unholy Presence, especially in a raid setting where you can soak RP with AMS. Please try to be more clear in what you are talking about.

Lynri · 05/20/09, 5:30 PM

It was in response to the post prior on the heavy Ob rotation that Veliya was talking about. It's the classic pre 3.1 Frost 2h rotation using IT just to refresh and using OB for the main damage output + HB on Rime procs. None of what was said was "erroneous" and I thought I was being pretty clear. My apologies I'll add his/her name before the start of the post though

seraphthrone · 05/20/09, 5:50 PM

"Ignis
Simply time AMS for use ~1s before he finishes his Flame Jets cast."

Is it just me or when you use AMS before he finishes you prevent yourself from getting the DOT afterward?

I mean you can probably keep dumping FS as you gain RP from the dot, that's more RP than the initial damage.

Erekose · 05/20/09, 6:00 PM

What I meant about erroneous was that you basically said that Blood Presence was better than Unholy for the rotation mentioned, and that is clearly not true. I just ran the single disease OB heavy rotation (its worth nothing that even in the OB heavy rotations, FS is the highest portion of your damage) in both Blood Presence and Unholy, and Unholy came out ahead by over 400 dps, and thats just on a target dummy without AMS soaks that can only be utilized effectively by UP rotations.

As of this moment for Frost (going off of impact of new Sigil + initial data coming from ITx6/ IT 2x disease) I don't see Blood as being the better presence for any gear level/spec/rotation with the exception of HB glyph 4pt7 single disease.

♦ Darkside · 05/20/09, 6:03 PM

Originally Posted by seraphthrone

"Ignis
Simply time AMS for use ~1s before he finishes his Flame Jets cast."

Is it just me or when you use AMS before he finishes you prevent yourself from getting the DOT afterward?

I mean you can probably keep dumping FS as you gain RP from the dot, that's more RP than the initial damage.

You make a good point. I'm not sure whether or not the dot applies if AMS is used before the cast has finished. As you say, it should not, but I recall gaining loads of RP even if I used AMS before the cast finished. If someone raiding tonight could please investigate this, it would be appreciated.

Originally Posted by Erekose

Excellent job Kroot, I was just about to make a new post to summarize this information but you beat me to it

if I might make a suggestion - you should have a 'Weave' section to explain what that means so we have less people asking the optimal way to insert FS into the rotation. Considering your organization sofar I would put it under the "Priority" section.

EDIT: Also, a section clarifying Runeforges (Crusader > All) so people don't keep popping up with that question, I'd love for this thread to remain un-crapped up as much as possible seeing as the old one got really, really bad.

Added both of these.

Lynri · 05/20/09, 6:11 PM

So what do you during the period of time in which you used to fill with FS but due to nerf (of 4set t7/7.5) really can't in Unholy Presence? There's generally a 1-2 second gap. And from my personal tests on a dummy I found Blood = Unholy for the heavy OB rotation using IT glyph. Slightly less if you're still running 4set due to the rp generation (though minor it is)

I've had other Dk's I talk to on my own server test this out as well an average about the same dps as well at varying gear levels. As mentioned in my post which the only edit was to add Veliya's name to the beginning of it, Blood Presence can alleviate issues she's experiencing with gaps in rotation while using Unholy Presence and in some cases be Blood > Unholy.

Would you mind collecting information showing where it was a drastic dps difference between Unholy Presence vs Blood Presence as you say? Even if it's your own personal meters is fine. As well as the rotation you used for the tests?

Personally you shouldn't spec/gear specifically for AMS soaks. It's great to be able to but not a requirement for dps if you can manage equivalent or better dps without it. It depends heavily on situation. In Blood Presence I don't have an issue with AMS soaks or the usage of UA as well from continuous testings in both Dummy and Heroics (currently tested in Nexus - UK - UP - Gundrak - DTK only though) I plan on further testing with WWS in tonight's Ulduar for my guild.

Nightseye · 05/20/09, 6:41 PM

FOR USE OF FROST DEATH KNIGHTS ON GENERAL VEZAX INTERRUPT DUTIES ONLY:

If you have an abundance of hit on your current gear, consider using 17/53/1 with the 2 points in Endless Winter instead of Virulence. This allows you much more freedom in your Frost Strikes because you don't need to worry about not having Runic Power for Searing Flames interrupts. Even if you only have the bare minimum 263 HR (10% spell hit), having a Shadow Priest/Boomkin in your raid in combination of a Draenei Aura in your group will provide you with 15% Spell hit, which is an acceptable amount for any boss encounter.

Erekose · 05/20/09, 6:51 PM

Originally Posted by Lynri

So what do you during the period of time in which you used to fill with FS but due to nerf (of 4set t7/7.5) really can't in Unholy Presence? There's generally a 1-2 second gap. And from my personal tests on a dummy I found Blood = Unholy for the heavy OB rotation using IT glyph. Slightly less if you're still running 4set due to the rp generation (though minor it is)

I've had other Dk's I talk to on my own server test this out as well an average about the same dps as well at varying gear levels. As mentioned in my post which the only edit was to add Veliya's name to the beginning of it, Blood Presence can alleviate issues she's experiencing with gaps in rotation while using Unholy Presence and in some cases be Blood > Unholy.

Would you mind collecting information showing where it was a drastic dps difference between Unholy Presence vs Blood Presence as you say? Even if it's your own personal meters is fine. As well as the rotation you used for the tests?

Personally you shouldn't spec/gear specifically for AMS soaks. It's great to be able to but not a requirement for dps if you can manage equivalent or better dps without it. It depends heavily on situation. In Blood Presence I don't have an issue with AMS soaks or the usage of UA as well from continuous testings in both Dummy and Heroics (currently tested in Nexus - UK - UP - Gundrak - DTK only though) I plan on further testing with WWS in tonight's Ulduar for my guild.

This was brought up in the previous thread and explained, but I'll clarify with the hopes that this issue will be put to rest or at least better understood.

The 4pt7 nerf hurts rotations that use OB a lot in order to generate RP for FS. By using IT on the death runes we make up the RP difference, and I can't disagree with you more when you say that you shouldn't be preparing (can't really spec/gear for it...) to use AMS offensively. As you can see via Kroot/Darkside's excellent boss summary there are VERY few fights where you can't use AMS soaks, and the plain and simple fact is that Unholy Presence can dump those FS without drastically altering (read: screwing up) the rotation whereas Blood Presence can't.

As for the rotation I was running, it was IT BS BS BT OB OB opener, then use the death runes to IT, otherwise spam OB and use Rime procs when they happen. As for the data, I don't believe I took a SS and I'm trying to avoid posting Recount shots as they can be very misleading, but I was ~3900-4050 w/ the above mentioned rotation in UP, and ~3500-3600 with BP. I credit the difference to being able to pump out more FS while keeping runes on CD. In BP my RP would fill up too quickly for me to expend it along with my rune abilities.

richard · 05/20/09, 6:57 PM

Originally Posted by Nightseye

Though the 2% miss on Vezax Interrupts can be quite inconvenient at times, so always have some backup hit gear available.

Mind Freeze uses melee hitcap mechanics (8%).

Obeidat · 05/20/09, 6:59 PM

Maybe its nice to add where to fit UA in rotations and add some essential macros in the OP.