waffletimeyo

First post, section VI. All the stat weight equations are there. Please read the damn thread.

 

Erekose

The easiest and quickest way to force the server to update your AP value for Indestructible Potions is to use Horn of Winter, but I think it only works if you cancel it first.

Use the following Macro:

/cancelaura Horn of Winter
/cast Horn of Winter

this will serve two purposes: update your AP if you used Indestructible Potion, and will also make it so you can use 2 min horn and not worry about another DK using 3 min horn. Just be careful only to hit it once because if you hit it a second time while horn is on CD it will remove your horn buff.

As for when to use Indestructible Potion...use it before the pull happens, then depending on the fight use it somewhere else. Keep in mind for the shorter fights that you want to use it ~2 minutes before the boss dies, or use it right when the boss hits 35%, whichever is better for that particular fight. 4 full minutes of ~100 AP will most likely beat pretty much anything for sustained DPS.

 

Spiekerboxx

My point being that the information on the two threads seems a tad conflicting and just wanted some clarification. Cause if you look at the stat weights for the BiS thread they are different. Also if these the stat weights posted here are the new and improved version then perhaps it would be helpful to everyone if they were transported over to the other thread as well and I'm sure that would change up the gear selection for BiS. But then again I could be assuming that this thread is taking into account that we wouldn't be using OB as much but I didn't get that out of it.

 

waffletimeyo

I just did some basic testing, and it seems that the AP you gain from the potion and swapping to FP doesn't come off until your strength changes. For the moment, I would just manually click off horn and re-apply just before a pull, and then for the rest of the fight make damn sure you dont let horn expire.

Of course, once blizzard gets around to fixing it, what you suggested will be the most effective method.

 

Erekose

Well, I was in Acherus standing next to the trainer, no buffs, 3799 AP. I use Indestructible Potion, waited 20 seconds, no change.

Used Horn of Winter, canceled it, now sitting at 3896 AP. I believe anything that adjusts the AP will force the update.

 

waffletimeyo

I'm not so sure about that. My ghetto dps set is still rockin the trinket from emblems of heroism and it defintely procced serveral times in my testing, and I'm fairly sure the ap from my initial swap to FP didnt come off. I'll do somemore testing with that in mind and get back to ya about it.

EDIT: Just confirmed it. My trinket proc did not take off the ap, but removing and re-applying horn did. Also tried it with a clicky AP trinket, and got the same result.

 

Travex

I thought this was covered in the first post this was brought up; Bladed Armor only recalculates itself when there is a change in your Strength. I suppose you could exploit it in the way that waffle suggested if for some reason you don't use Greatness but Blizz would soon notice and fix it anyway.

 

Valtiel

A consideration on the BP vs UP comparison.

A rotation (as in, double refresh of your 6 runes) is generally assumed to last 20 seconds. It's not something set in stone as you will more often then not run "longer" rotations due to movement etc, but we can start from this assumption.

This means essentially having 13 gcds per rotation in BP, and 20 in UP.

Now, let's consider how we fill these with an "intense" rotation - I'm gonna use the double disease rotation:

IT -> PS -> OB -> BS -> BS -> DUMP
OB -> IT ->PS -> IT -> IT -> DUMP

This rotation requires 10 gcds from rune abilities alone. You generate 75 RP in the first part of the rotation, plus 105 in the second part.
To this you need to add 8 RP from Butchery, bringing the total to 188. Frost Strike costs 32 RP, so this means 5,8 Frost Strikes.

You will need 15 global cooldowns to use all abilities, 2 more than BP allows for. Now, if you add HoW, you bring the total to 198, which allows for 6 Frost Strike and 17 gcds.

This mean, on paper, that you can't hold this rotation in BP. And that UP should be obviously superior.

Just to try and verify the equation, we can do a very simple (and inaccurate, but hopefully the results should be obvious enough) mathematical experiment.

Let's say the BP guy ditches HoW and one IT for a FS he won't be able to use anyway, and runs over 20 seconds the following attacks:

3 IT - 2 OB - 2 BS - 2 PS - 4 FS (13 gdcs)

The UP guy instead will have:

4 IT - 2 OB - 2BS - 2 PS - 6 FS (How) (18 gdcs)


Now, let's arbitrary assing a "damage equivalence" value to attacks. Let's say PS and IT deal 15 damage, BS deals 20, OB deals 40 and FS deals 50. Diseases ticking over time deal 15 damage each.

The UP presence guy is dealing:

4 IT (60) - 2 OB (80)- 2BS (40) - 2 PS (30) - 6 FS (300) + 30 from diseases = a total of 540 damage

The BP presence guy is dealing:

[3 IT (45) - 2 OB (80) - 2 BS (40) - 2 PS (30) - 4 FS (200) + 30 from diseases]*1.15 = a total of 488,75 damage

Even if the stripped out math doesn't give any form of authentic representation of dps, it should be clear from a logic perspective that it's impossible for BP to keep up. BP gains 15% damage, UP gains 50% gcds.

The BP guy could then try and fill his gcds with heavier damage abilities, for example running an OB heavy rotation:

IT -> PS -> OB -> BS -> BS -> DUMP
OB -> IT ->PS -> OB > DUMP

getting

2x IT 2x PS 3x OB 2x BS 4xFS, or 517.5 damage

Assigning 35 damage to HB, he could then try a single disease rotation:

HB > OB -> BS -> BS -> DUMP
OB -> HB -> OB -> DUMP

which, assuming HoW, generates enough RP for 4 FS, thus having:

2x HB 3x OB 2x BS 4x FS or 511,75

But now let's try to look at UP WITHOUT the IT glyph. The core rotation:

IT -> PS -> OB -> BS -> BS -> DUMP
OB -> IT ->PS -> IT -> IT -> DUMP

including HoW and Butchery would now generate 158 RP, which doesn't generate 5 FS per rotation but we will assume so considering random elements like druid hots etc.

That would bring the damage to
4 IT (60) - 2 OB (80)- 2BS (40) - 2 PS (30) - 5 FS (250) + 30 from diseases = a total of 490 damage



Conclusions:

I repeat once again, the maths above are absolutely abstract and weightless from a dps calculation point of view, but they try to portray a scenario to explain a simple logic conclusion:

Unholy Presence is "only" viable because of the IT glyph.

Without the IT glyph (which we sort of concluded is overpowered anyways), to obtain the number of necessary extra attack (1 IT + 1 FS won't cut it and even if the math is terrible, I've been extremely generous towards FS compared to other abilities to try and make the UP odds as high as possible) UP needs a huge amount of factors that, in my opinion, lead it into being the classic case of theorycally superior but practically dubious solution.

Now, we should add a lot of factors to this equation. AMS certainly stacks up for UP and it's not a minimal factor (assuming a good case scenario of 3 extra FS every 45 seconds, having the spare GCDs for them is gonna be a huge dps advantage.
And at this point, I feel the need to add that I more and more feel we're moving away from the concept of rotations and accepting Frost is a pure priority system.

What stacks well for BP is that I've noticed I'm essentially almost never RP starved. In reality my rotations are made of pumping as many FS I can get without ever waiting for GCDs to light. More often than not, I just skip using BS if I don't have the time. Having such a powerful RP dump means that at some point you can't care less about using all your runes if you can still keep hitting with FS. From a rotation point of view it's inefficient, but from a damage point of view most of the time those two BS slots are filled with a FS and a Ryme procc and over the course of the damage interval the gain is obvious.

This to say that the theorycal superiority of UP is undeniable. With the current IT glyph, my experience is that such superiority is also practical but less sensible than theory would make us assume, and I feel that if the IT glyph will change, UP will lose viability altogether because translating the theorycal advantage in practical gaming will net you a small gain when you make it and a huge loss when you don't.

 

Cabal

I feel a bit puzzled at the moment regarding stat weights for frost, namely the value of armour penetration for this specc. On this thread´s first page we have:

Which agrees with what I thought, that ArPen was fairly weak for the specc, being last tied with haste. However, in the BiS thread we have:

Hit > Str > Exp > ArPen > Crit > Ap > Haste

And the supposedly BiS gear set is riddled with ArPen.

Where do we stand? Quite interested in this, as my guild might possibly start work on Hodir hard mode, and I will surely specc frost for it.

 

zagor

Data in BiS thread is the result of an OB heavy rotation, either with IT-PS or HB. Most of the discussion here deals with the proposed rotation which focuses on gyphed IT and using death runes from DRM and BotN for IT.

 

Rafaedrin

Would this not be due to the fact you have an increased number of runes and RP expended on melee abilites equalling more KM procs?

 

Yesuare

I tried posting this before in the old thread however with a lot of people around arguing over best in slot items it was ignored. Does anyone think that the bellow spec would have any advantage as gear scales up.


I hope this isnt repeating something old but after a quick search I couldnt find anything old on this subject.

im very interested in the possibility of a 2/51/18 build.

The idea is to take a slow 230dps or 240dps weapon, namely the pvp weapon rewards.
Fight in unholy pressence, stack some haste.
Take points in imp icy talons and, blood caked blade and necrosis.

Rotation would be:

ps > it > bs > bs > obl > RP dump || obl > obl > obl > RP dump

It may be necessery to dump RP between rune skills as with icy touch glyph i would expect runic power to build up to 130 fairly fast.
Obviousely HB would be used whenever it pops up to but just after the swing timer.

Sigil of vengefull heart would be desirable for this and the following glyphs:

FS, OBl, IT


If anyone has vengull heart and some nice gear + the time / willingness to test this then it would be really interesting to see the results. Unfortuantely my guild needs me as a tank and dont even have top end dps gear QQ

 

Erekose

It was ignored for good reason, it's definitely not optimal. The gains from Blood early on in the tree vastly outperform the early Unholy tree. This is explained in the OP.

It's relatively easy to see why, and I can do it without confusing math! Just use the Socratic method...

Does BCB affect 100% of your damage? No
Does Necrosis affect 100% of your damage? No

Does Bladed Armor affect 100% of your damage? Yes
Does Dark Conviction affect 100% of your damage? Yes (Yeah, I know it doesn't affect DoT ticks, but spare me, its just for purposes of comparison)

Necro and BCB aren't amazing by any stretch of the imagination and you have to dump filler talent points to get to them, whereas Blood is $$$ all the way.

 

Valtiel

To use less colorful examples, white damage should constitute more or less 20% of your damage in normal conditions. Even a 20% increase to that damage would end up being a 5% overall dps, which is definitely less than Two Handed Weapon specc + the other talents. Remember THWS, it's the real winner in Blood.

 

Alborak

In the OP there is an open question of whether the ITx6 rotation is viable. Viability is difficult to define, but I'm going to take it to mean "Can you take this spec into a raid and produce competitive DPS?" My answer to this is a hesitated yes. I was able to take the spec, in gear optimized for blood (~22% ArP but do have Vengeful Heart) and produce a Vezax kill with 5,000 DPS, Ignis with about 4750 DPS. Surely not top of the barrel numbers, but they are competitive for middle slots within my raid.

To confirm earlier points of 2x IT being greater than Oblit for the use of 2 death runes, through vezax my average IT was 2860, average OB (45% crit on fight) was 4800. 2x IT is 5720 damage, clearly beating OB before the 35 RP differential which tacks on an additional 7,600 Damage for a FS + 3 RP.

Vezax Parse: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I can't make any comments on whether 17/51/3 and using ITx6 is the optimal way to play frost, but I believe that with what I've seen playing it this week that it is currently a viable way to play.

 

• Darkside

For the sake of this thread, viability is going to be defined as: "Produces equal or greater damage output than the currently accepted Frost spec on a consistent and repeatable basis."

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Valtiel

An extremely important factor to consider, something that can't be stressed enough when talking about DK Dps, is that 1 OB is one gcd, and 2 ITs are 2 gcd.

This is a cardinal point: DK dps is based on infinite, time based resources. Two gcd abilities that sum up to more damage than one gcd ability are a dps gain ONLY if the one gcd ability is followed at some point by an empty gcd.

Imagine a sequence like this

OB - IT - IT - FS - FS - OB

and

OB - OB - FS - FS - OB

On paper, you would look and think that if OB sums for 4800 and 2 x IT sum for 5700, the first rotation is producing the most damage. This is only true if the second rotation can't fill the empty gcd with another ability. Imagine the second rotation has resources to fill the empty gcd with an OB, or a FS or even an IT - it's producing a lot more damage at that point.

The correct mindset when practically dpsing (which is different from theorycrafting dps) is to fill your gcd with your highest impact moves as long as you don't run out of resources. In my theorycrafting, I've always ended up seeing the HB glyph rotation as the "weakest" (by a little margin to the 3 IT glyph rotation, by a far bigger one to the 6xIT rotation). In practice, it's always been competitive with those two and actually quite above in many cases in my latest tests. The reason is that for now I never find myself with empty global cooldowns to fill in BP, and I don't have enough resources to fill all in UP. Which in the end makes for me the HB rotation the absolute best in BP (because I get resources faster than I can spend them and thus I fill every gcd with extremely high impact moves) and make it still very competitive with UP rotations.

You need to look at gcds as a resource too. You can have a rotation that on paper produces more dps by stacking in 15 abilities, but if in reality you only have 13 gcds and another rotation allows you to fill them with higher damage abilities, you will do more damage with this rotation. That's what makes UP so good at the moment - we have so many resources that we don't have enough gcds to use them, and more importantly, it allows you to use the optimal rune set usage while not clipping over to refreshes.

 

yek366

I believe this was on the first page, but I saw that the sigil is the single biggest upgrade in all of Ulduar. Another buddy of mine said it could possibly be better than Betrayer->Voldrethar. I don't know if would go that far, but I understand that it is a huge upgrade. Just from my raid last night:

~36-37% FS damage, 3700 average hit

Add 380, GR, TS, BI, BotN, Ret Aura, and it adds ~683 damage per FS (785 in BP)

683/3700 = 18.5% more damage per FS, so it's about a 6.5% overall dps increase.

This is all very sloppy quick math on a single case, but it gets the point across. However, does anyone have a quick show of how this compares to the upgrade to Voldrethar?

 

Stein

For maximum benefit of this feature (not exploitation!), one could use 3min horn glyph, pop the potion pre-pull (even working in Frost Presence) and cancel/cast horn. If they weren't using Greatness or FC, the additional AP would last for 3 minutes. Then they could pop a second potion when horn expired and gain another 3 minutes.

So, is a maximum of 6 minutes of this additional AP greater than the drop from FC to Cinderglacier + drop from Greatness to w/e trinket is next best?

 

Veala

On IT6 viability.

After getting back into the IT6 mindset last week I can verify that IT6 is most definitely viable. This week I was able to meet or exceed most of my old parses in Ulduar. Here are two of my parses, one running an IT6 priority system the whole raid, and another for a mix of HB glyph and 2 disease Oblit heavy rotations:

IT6:
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

Old rotations:
Wow Web Stats

I believe that Auriaya is the only boss I wasn't able to meet my old parse on, and keep in mind that in the wws report we spent a lot more time on Thorim than we did this week (hence our DK's inflated numbers). Now granted, this is a small sample size, but I think it does prove IT6's viability if nothing else, even if it isn't our ideal rotation.

 

waffletimeyo

Your parses actually answered another question I had, that being whether or not DK spells can trigger singed from the toasty fires on Hodir. They aparrently do, and that makes me wonder if it would be viable to park hodir close enough to fires that DKs could use them.

 

halfpint

It was stated in the last thread that frost can produce the best dps for Hodir. There was a stat linking where one frost dk produced 12.8k dps (unholy was at 9.6k). I managed 8.5k last night in sub optimal gear, and an incredibly sloppy rotation / missing glyphs. I can confirm that FS, HB and IT all up the fire debuff. I like seeing the 48k+ frost strikes, so I make sure I and swap into frost spec for Hodir every week.

If you're looking to tweak dps for one fight though, maybe it should be in a separate thread, since it will detract from the discussion here.

The idea is you go out of your way to maximize for it, since it's a mostly magic damage fight.

Some of the ideas include...
ITx6 if possible,
razorice,
AMS through frozen blows,
stand on the fires,
make sure you have the storm debuff,
skip blood rune abilities.

 

drothar

You may want to point out in the OP that the OB-heavy BP rotations are usually better with Sigil of Awareness, but as soon as you get your hands on Vengeful Heart, UP rotations are the clear-cut winner.

Also a side note: Frost may be changing into the DW tree next major patch.

 

Erekose

Wrong. If you spec for Frost Strike, Vengeful Heart destroys Awareness. In every situation, for every rotation, presence, etc. It's arguably a better upgrade than Betrayer to Voldrethar.

If you are going to post something that is not backed up by *any* data at all other than your untested opinion, at least have some halfway intelligent theory-craft to back it up.

Sorry to sound so mean, but I'm just absolutely sick and tired of people crapping up this thread after we went through 45+ pages of the exact same nonsense in the previous thread.

 

• Darkside

I believe the fires only trigger from spell casts (not melee attacks). So while Frost DKs, Enh Shamans etc, would be able to apply the Singed debuff, it is far, far better to keep them at a distance and let the fast casting range (which they all are, given the starlight buff) take advantage of them. Furthermore, the range needs the fires to be at a distance so they can get that extra 20% aggro cap as Hodir can be an extremely aggro sensitive encounter.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot