concept84

In current content a rotation like this greatly under-performs because of the lack of runic power to fuel Frost Strikes, and even though Frost Strike generates less overall damage % come 3.2 having a quality runic power dump is still important.

DRM also seems to be wasted talent points, as your rotation doesn't use Blood runes for anything else other than Pestilence, and you'll be using the FU runes turned Death runes for Obliterates anyway.

In contrast to a rotation without Pest glyph you'd be comparing one OB to IT, PS, multiple BS's, and a massive loss in RP generation, which equates to less FS.

I'm not sure what this parse is supposed to show us, as it is from a fight where Frost really can't do bad at all due to the buffs that skew our damage so much.

Dummy tests aside (which are almost useless), all parses/sims I've seen to date, and all theorycrafting and the math behind it show the use of Pest glyph to be a DPS loss. If for some odd reason this changes for Frost DW in 3.2 I highly doubt a 5-rune rotation and a build with DRM in it will be the best way to showcase this change.

I will say though you have peeked my curiousity. I'd like to see a parse of like Vezax, Ignis (without AOE on the adds), or Yogg if you have one.

 

Astalion

Um, how? As far as I can see, you would be using 1 pestilence every 12-15ish seconds, which would yield only 1 Death Rune during the same period. Using Pestilence more often would mean clipping more ticks, which obviously isn't beneficial.
(In general, I don't really see a Glyph of Disease spec working out without Epidemic btw, unless you're not actually generating/using death runes from it, which would be kinda pointless in the context)

Edit: @concept84: Glyph of Disease seems like it actually could be a viable option assuming my math is correct (yes, shamelessly drawing attention to my other post, wtb some constructive criticism )

 

Amiko

Which runes get used for which attacks slide -- you are using all six runes. That's why DRM is important -- you'll often be hitting pestilence with frost/unholy rune which will still proc a death rune on a refreshing blood rune which you then use for an obliterate -- just make sure you pestilence with it later for the death rune.

From a RP generation perspective, it's really not that much of an issue -- you're in blood presence so you don't have that many GCD's to spend anyway -- you end up with pretty much a 1:1 ratio ( as evidenced by the parse ) of frost strikes to obliterates. I'm seriously considering dropping runic power mastery for toughness for the extra RP since I'm never RP capped -- but I'm never starved either.

I'll get a better parse in the near to immediate future, probably tomorrow on vezax.

 

Foxx2405

The theory craft isn't really that hard on this though.

Basically what you gain/lose besides the glyph slot is:

- You trade 1 IT + 1 PS for 1 Obliterate (this is the gain of the disease glyph)
- You trade 1 BS for 1 PT (this is the lose, since the latter does no damage)

So the question is, does 1 Bloodstrike do more damage than ( 1 Obliterate - 1 IT - 1 PS )
Death rune mastery and whatnot have nothing to do with it really. BS and PT both generate 1 Deathrune

Is the WWS report from the PTR ?

Anyway i'll just run the numbers really fast. From Hodir try 3

Blood strike:
0.5 * 1374 (non crit) + 0.5 * 4855 (crit) = 3115 avg damage

Obliterate:
0.5 * 2977 + 0.43 * 12075 = 6681 avg damage

Plague Strike:
0.75 * 928 + 0.25 * 4573 = 1839

Icy Touch
0.36 * 2704 + 0.64 * 11901 = 8590 avg damage (this one seems a bit high though due to the buffs you get, for simplicity sake ill lower the crit chance to 40% and the crit damage to 5000) =>
0.6 * 2704 + 0.4 * 5000 = 3622


Anyway putting them together, again ill say what happens. By using glyph of disease you don't have to use IT and PS, but you can use Obliterate. Thus the damage you gain from that is the obliterate damage minus the combined damage from IT and PS
By using PT instead of BS you lose the damage of BS, so lets add that all up:

BS vs (Obl - IT - PS)
3115 vs (6681 - 3622 - 1839)
3115 vs 1220

You actually lose damage by switching to Glyph of Diseases.

There are some more factors at play here like:

- With glyph of disease you gain a GCD, which for the build is a very sexy gain.

however on the other hand

- You lose the damage i just explained
- You generate less RP (IT + PS gives 35 glyphed, obliterate only 20)
- You have to spend a glyph slot on it which could've gone to something else as well. It means you either have to give up Obliterate / Icy Touch or Frost Strike. All of them glyphs you DON'T want to miss.

All in all i doubt its worth the cost.

 

kidpreacher

On Wowhead: Best when viewed!, we have been covering the idea of using pesitlence to refresh to simplify the rotation that we are working with. It's also a way to not waste the talent points to spec down to Epidemic. As far as I can see most people are having trouble fitting in a complete rune dump as well as Rime procs and keep the diseases up. The Glyph while allowing you to keep the diseases up will give us a greater up time on Obliterates and longer FS Rune spams at the cost of a Blood token

Build 15/56/0 - granted there is a wasted point in Hungering Cold that can be spent anywhere.

Using these glyphs and talents you would have a simplified rotation of
IT/PS/OB/BS/BS/FS dump (which is exactly the same as before)
BT/OB/OB/OB/Pest/FS dump
OB/OB/BS/BS/FS dump

As far as I can tell I gain an extra OB just about every time through and I can spend a few more GCD on FS before hitting the pestilence button to get on.

Now the factor remains and someone did some base math and linked it above, so I won't relink it again.

But here is the basic trade off:

Gain:
1 or 2 Obliterates - depending on your view
FS (the amount of FS changes depending on how many we can get in before we restart the rotation) and a simpler rotation.

Loses:
1IT 1PS 1BS
BS Glyph (20 percent increase in BS damage on Snared Targets which only works on non-bosses)
IT or HB Glyph (if not glyphed for BS, though the amount of runic power lost on this is replaceable and the HB Glyph provides the same dps that glyph of pestilence does)

This is only a single target rotation as in multiple targets you would need HB in your rotation.

I think that the above poster doesn't understand the benefit of Disease in that it allows a few more FS before having to work back into your reapplication.

So the 1220 gain you would need to add in the dps addition of an extra FS

Edited: lol, added too many runes in thanks for pointing that out.

 

Kyruski

How are you getting 3OBs + BS (and sometimes Pest) in one rune set? That's 6 Runes already for the OBs, where are you getting these extra runes for BS (and sometimes Pest).

 

WimpySmurf

First time poster, but long time reader.

With respect to using Glyph of Disease. What I see the biggest benefit of using it is that it frees up GCDs to use on Rime procs. If you use a 1.7s GCD due to latency then running the IT/PS/OB/BS/BS/Dump, OB/OB/OB/Dump rotation fills every single GCD. Below is a table of time and assumed damage done per skill along with the RP gain/usage. The very low right corner is total damage done when you take the remaining RP/32*(FS dmg).

If you assume that Rime procs occur once every four 20s cycles, then HB would need to hit for ~14k on average to make using the Glyph of Disease rotation come out ahead. ((48k-44.5k)*4) Now that's also with the assumption that chart one, uses 0 Rime procs. Now, the tough to map out in a spreadsheet is how fitting in an extra FS and Rime procs into your rotation affects your DPS. Which makes me curious if a 3/50/18 w/o HB and 3/5 KM using the first rotation would be effective?

Though, if you actually use Rime procs prior to any OB (and possibly FS), that maybe the highest DPS you can achieve since HB is the hardest hitting skill (~7k for a toon hitting for 5.5k with OB). I say prior to OB, since you want to consume it so that every OB has a chance to proc it. Prior to FS is probably a good idea too in case you have a KM proc up.

-WimpySmurf

 

kidpreacher

Because I am a moron who typed too many OB's without paying attention ;p

 

Astalion

@Foxx2405: Those numbers are from live, so the numbers will be off. IT glyph no longer seems that appealing anyway, assuming of course that you can get something to activate the Blood Strike glyph. I did a similar comparison a few pages back, with numbers from simulators and a bit more indepth calculation of the benefit of the extra GCDs.

@kidpreacher: You will not be able to use Blood Tap every rune refresh, which kinda ruins your "rotation". Extending your rotation to a full minute, I can sort of puzzle it together, but you're missing out on TS on FF on 44% of the ticks. Over these 60 seconds, I'm getting (just for the runes that is) 2*IT, 2*PS, 13*OB, 5*BS, 2*Pest - compared to a standard rotation giving 3*IT, 3*PS, 12*OB, 6*BS (and that's without having BT bound to the rotation, so you can use it for say UA, or another Blood Strike for this comparison) - which comes out as a dps loss for your suggested spec, even before considering other glyphs that could be used. You wouldn't actually be gaining any FS's either, you're using the same amount of GCDs (or possibly one less, depending on how the other rotation would use Blood Tap - this could lead to more FS's for you if you're AMS soaking) and generating less RP (if my assumption of the continued rotation is wrong, please do post what you were aiming for)
Also, the Blood Strike glyph is not only for nonboss mobs - FFB and Infected Wounds activate it as well.

@WimpySmurf: You're forgetting about ToT, which is a fairly huge deal. Double the damage of every strike and you're at almost the exact numbers I'm using for calculations. Assuming Rime proccing every four 20s is a very low estimate as well, as long as the offhand ToT attack can proc it you should be looking at 0.7-1.1 Rime procs per 20s rotation (this accounts for overlapping procs as well). Otherwise you're running on simular assumptions as I did a few pages back, except I go about the comparison in a different manner - I'll try something like what you did and see if I come up with anything interesting.
As for leaving out HB, it's a strong talent even for singletarget DPS (mainly as a filler with Rime procs, still adds 60ish dps) and should be a pretty massive gain in aoe damage. Both KM and BCB however are of lesser impact from what I've seen, so I think we're better off sticking with HB.

@Amiko: The big problem I see when trying to model your rotation is that you really only will be able to use 5 of the runes - Oblit always takes pairs of runes, Pest takes a single one.
Let's say you do Pest-OB-OB. There's no more runes you can use until 10 sec after the pest, so this rune refresh only used 5 runes. You then use OB-OB-Pest, refreshing diseases at the very last moment (we're talking a split second from falling off, 4.99 seconds into this rune refresh). Another rune refresh with only 5 runes used.
If you then try to sneak in 3*OB in the next rune refresh, your diseases will have run out just before the next rune rotation starts (diseases had been running for 5.01 seconds, + 10 seconds for the next set of runes, 15 second disease duration).
Basically, you're stuck with 2*OB and 1*Pest every single rune refresh (barring use of BT), unless I'm missing something?

Also, that's all assuming 0ms latency and permanent Death Runes.
Your ratio of 1:1 OB:FS is kind of interesting as well, I'm getting closer to a 5:4 ratio (slightly higher even) with my Glyph of Disease setup.

 

Odii

@WimpySmurf

As already pointed out, you should double the strike damage. Additionally, the 7 extra RP is completely wasted. You dont have the GCD to use it. Id adjust it as follows:

Difference of just 1750 over time. Use glyph of bloodstrike over IT and I figure its more like 2858.75 difference. On average you can fill that empty GCD slot with .75 Howling blasts which represents about 914.025 more frost strike damage tacked on the end just considering the extra 3.75 RP generated, narrowing the difference to 1944.7475. So if Howling Blast does more then say 2600 damage on average (and it will) according to those numbers Glyph of Disease will win out, without factoring having other sources feeding you RP.

Im almost certain Glyph of Disease is the way to go, that extra GCD is just gold.

 

Konata

Glyph of Disease seems like it would only be beneficial to unholy subspec with epidemic more.

That way you can have
PS>IT>OB>BS>Pest

Then repeating:
3xOB
2xOB>Pest>BS
And can use blood tap for UA.

Other benefit is that it is a really simple rotation, and less chance of missing if you are not spell hit capped. This also works better for AoE situtations as well, but then again you could always tab+pest to do the same thing.

If you don't have it you are on a 15 or 20 sec rotation so you would need to refresh disease alot more often, pretty much in after the 1st runeset you need to IT/PS already.

Someone's calc before said to compare it to OB-IT-PS-BS. But I think it should actually be 2x OB + 1 GCD(lets say FS or HB here they do somewhat similar damage as well) - 2(IT+PS) - BS if that is greater than 0 it would be useful to use glyph of disease.

I believe BCB should be a little more useful now for Slow/Slow as it is now no longer normalized in the newest PTR notes.

 

Foxx2405

Well if it turns out to be better I wouldn't mind at all.
Just makes the rotation a bit more manageable.

So then the rotation is:

IT>PS>OB>PT>BS > FS>FS (<Starter)

OB>OB>FS>OB>FS
OB>OB>FS>PT>BS>FS

Easily doable in BP with gcds to spare. This kind of looks like the unholy rotation, which i personally like since it allows focus on the rotation and focus on your surroundings.

EDIT:
As Konata above me said, it would require you to have Epidemic though, without it Glyph of Diseases wont do much for you at all.

 

Xerokamui

This means that I can go back to my fast/fast weapons now. I couldn't think of any other reason to go slow/slow with the 0/53/18 spec0-53-18 Deep Frost

 

• Darkside

I think you're reading that wrong. This is a nerf to DW fast/fast. The only advantage fast/fast had over slow/slow was that BCB procs produced a normalized attack. With that removed, slow/slow is the uncontested king of future DW specs.

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

 

Valtiel

And this probably puts Unholy on the throne of DW subspeccs even for Frost. BCB was a huge dps increase before, now 2 2.6 speed weapons will be producing a truckload of damage.

As far as I can see, it's not a nerf to fast fast but a buff to slow slow.

12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.

 

Rakki

Actually, it's both a nerf to fast/fast as well as a buff to slow/slow

On live:
A 1.4s weapon gets multiplier of 2.4 for attack power contribution due to normalization
A 2.7s weapon also gets 2.4 multiplier.

In the new patch:
A 1.4s weapon will get multiplier of 1.4s, whereas
a 2.7s weapon will get 2.7

 

Valtiel

The coefficieny for 1h normalization is 2.4? Yuck. Well, in that case it's a next to nonexistant buff to slow and a huge nerf to fast.

12 weeks without a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart drop and counting.

 

Astalion

@Odii: Just a note, your observation about there being 7 wasted RP at the end of the first rotation also means that you're only getting 3 useable RP out of the IT glyph, which really would reduce it's value.

@BCB Change: Interesting, I guess this means Unholy DW specs no longer care about offhand weapon speed at all, and should even be a slight nerf to them as they were "abusing" the normalization. As noted this also comes out as a buff for deep frost specs, and if glyph of disease really is that effective frost might be able to take the #1 position for DW specs - theorycraft session inc.

@Astalion: That theory on a DRM rotation assumes only one Pestilence per rune refresh, you might actually be able to get those 3 OBs in one rune refresh by staggering rune use. /Slap

Edit: Simulations with the new BCB change are giving me 7083 (3/51/17, BS Glyph) and 7129 (0/17/54) dps. (Using BiS (at least as far as I can tell) gear depending on spec, 200ms, 500h).

Using a similar comparison method to WimpySmurf's with averaging procs in and such, I'm getting these results (RP being an "open" GCD for FS or Rime procs) (I'm rounding a few values slightly, but the calculations were done without rounding):
This comes out as a 259 dps advantage for the Disease Glyph (20.4 seconds to complete the rotation), which, if correct, puts it at 7342 dps (see above simulations), a decent bit above the Unholy spec.
Using my previous method based on simulation data (the simulations don't end up with a "neat" 12 GCD rotation, but end up at an average of 12.3 GCDs, and most of the additional GCDs end up being used for HBs - it also adds some FSs from RP gains from Rime HBs (my math doesn't include those 5 RP)), the Disease Glyph seems to give 169 dps, ending up at 7252 dps.

Either way - the Disease Glyph does appear to be quite strong for deep frost.

 

Konata

Did you just reply to yourself? o_O

Also interesting note about the

Chilblains: Icy Clutch can no longer miss when Frost Fever hits, however, when Frost Fever is dispelled Icy Clutch will also be dispelled.

I wonder if this means chillblains will actually debuff bosses with no effect now, thus making the BS glyph somewhat interesting option as well now. Instead of them being immune and it not working. If someone could test that out on the PTR it would be nice. I can't remember which bosses were immune though, I think all raid bosses should be.

 

Foxx2405

Wouldn't call it non existent, every buff is welcomed.

Short explaination for those somewhat unknown with what normalization means:

What changes here is the damage component that BCB recieves from your AP. (which is the biggest component).
The calculation for this is: AP / 14 * Speed

The reason normalization is added is because "on demand strikes" like say blood strike would otherwise gain a much greater benefit from slow weapons.
On BCB it works differently however, you would expect it to not be normalized, afterall its a static proc percentage so fast weapons proc it more often.

It was normalized before though, so all weapons gain a 2.4 modifier.

Lets say you have 2x 200 dps weapons, a 1.5 speed one and a 2.7 speed one. The 1.5 has avg dmg of 1.5 * 200 = 300 damage and the 2.7 of 2.7 * 200 = 540 damage
And 6000 AP. Lets ignore crits and modifiers for a bit.
BCB does 50% damage (with 2 diseases) and has a 30% chance to proc per hit.

------

In live the attacks are normalized, meaning that both the 1.5 and 2.7 speed weapon get the same contribution from AP namely:
( 6000 / 14 * 2.4 ) = 1029 damage

So the fast one does ( 1029 + 300 ) * 0.5 = 664.5 damage every 3/10 hits. And you hit every 1.5 second.
DPS gain = 664.5 * 3 / 10 / 1.5 = 133 dps

Slow one dps gain = 87 dps (not gonna write it out, calc is the same but with 540 base dmg and 2.7 speed)

So normalized fast has a nice benefit as it only hits slightly weaker but procs a lot more.

------

PTR things change a bit attacks are no longer normalized.
That means the AP contribution for fast is: ( 6000 / 14 * 1.5 ) = 643 ; and for slow its 1157

That means
Fast dps gain is: 94.3 dps
Slow dps gain is: 94.2 dps

In other words, normalization makes fast lose their edge. 30% nerf for fast weapons, 10% buff for slow weapons (give or take).

And remember with 2 weapons the difference should be pretty nice.

NOTE: The numbers here are simplified, in real game you have a ton of modifiers added as well. Don't think BCB actually only adds 95 dps, its probably way more.

 

Astalion

Might have :P Figured it was a better way to get attention to my mistake rather than editing a post half a page up. *Cough* I hope my edit 3 posts up will get noticed at least *Cough*

Interesting indeed, but considering we (or at least I did, I think others did as well tho?) already assumed 100% uptime for the BS Glyph, I'm not sure it's actually gonna be relevant for us. Omw to test it anyway.

Edit: Sartharion was immune to it.

 

Esfernum

Not exactly. You won't get the Icy Talon / Improved Icy Talon if not triggered by Frost Fever application as far as I know.

 

Odii

Your number of Rime procs looks high (.15 per OB * 5 OBs =.75, and your number of frost strikes low (your not factoring in CotG 5 RP for Rime uses, Im assuming you still get that RPin 3.2). Unless you get 2 chances to proc Rime, 1 for each hand?

Anyways, factoring in those changes brings the specs closer together, but Pestilence would still be slightly ahead. Which considering you have about .4 of a GCD to play with if you have any kind of extra RP to play with from outside sources, your way ahead.

Right now Im thinking that youd start such a rotation with IT>PS>OB>Empowered Rune Weapon>OB>RP>OB>BS>Pest>RP to quickly build RP, then follow with:

RP>OB>RP>OB>RP>OB
RP>OB>RP>OB>BS>Pest

 

Astalion

@Esfernum: True, but the maximum dps spec assumes you get the 20% haste from some other source.

@Odii: ToT does give an additional chance to proc Rime (Edit: tested it again with the latest build, it can still proc twice from the same Obliterate), bringing the proc chance per Obliterate up to 27,75%. Also, I assumed that you would only use Rime during the GCDs assigned for RP dumping, meaning simply multiplying the proc chance with the number of Obliterates would give you a too high number (my math assumes you never break a OB-OB combo to use Rime).

Adding in the RP from CotG+Rime actually favors the Glyph of Disease rotation by the way, as it gains about 6 RP per 20s from it, while the other gains ~0.5 RP per 20s, not to mention not actually having the spare GCDs to use it.
(I'm gonna try to figure out the actual math for the RP from CotG, as getting more RP from HBs will mean more FS which will lead to less GCDs for Rime which will lead to casting less HBs)
Edit: Hm, the equation ([Base RP from Rotation]+ X*5)/32 + X = [RPDump GCDs], where X is the number of HBs should work shouldn't it?
Edit2: The equation does seem to match up, and interestingly it causes both variants to generate the exact same amount of RP (~125.4 per 20s). The comparison then becomes 1 IT+1 PS+1.4 BS (1 more actual BS, rest is glyph) vs 1 OB+1 HB. This, as expected, pushes the Disease glyph further ahead, coming out at 271 dps over the BS glyph (that's 12 dps or so more than my previous calculations).

 

Thuggernaut

I would think that maxing out all the core DPS talents in frost and going as far as 3/3 BCB would now be the way to go, however that still leaves out 1 talent point. I'm debating whether or not it would be better off in Subversion or in Deathchill 1/52/18

Also, maybe somebody could do the math and check the value of simply using Glyph of Disease to cut out IT/PS if your rotation. At the moment, it seems obvious that you wouldn't want Disease because you need to IT to refresh IIT, and you get that extra 5% melee haste.