Indeed. And i'm not sure whether T9 content will feature such strain on the pet, but either way the point remains that unholy always has that factor to keep in mind, whereas frost doesn't.

-----

Too steer this conversation a bit back ontopic, I was wondering what frost is going to do with the third glyph now.

Glyph of bloodstrike is still an option, though with the recent changes it lost a lot of potential I would assume. So taking a critical look at the other options again.

Other options are pretty much limited to these:
- Diseases
- Icy Touch
- Plague Strike
- Howling Blast
(- Ghoul)

The first is not really an option if you have to reapply IIT.
The second does not seem that worthwhile as it is only 10 RP extra per 20 seconds. That is 1 FS per minute.
The third for the same reason (once per 20 seconds) does not seem too special either, but i'll run a quick test on these when i get home.

The forth has some potential if used intelligent.
I've been watching Odii's posts and they are quite hard to understand. I understood the first example, where you basically replace an IT or BS with HB if rime procced. However I'm wondering, if you do that in the rotation you seem to leave the BS/IT rune alone. Won't that make the rotation messy when you have to break close combat for example ?

The second example i don't quite get. If you use HB in place of the FS, what use is the glyph if you still intend to use Icy touch in the next step. (Or was it your intention to use blood strike if rime procced ?)

I finally was able to pick up my 2 1H weapons, [Razorscale Talon] and [Malice], and was wondering which would be better for MH, [Malice] has better weapon dmg but [Razorscale Talon] is slower. Has anybody been able to do stat weights for weapon speed or weapon dmg for DW yet? I figured Malice would be better but wasn't sure if the 0.1 sec on Razorscale Talon would make it a better MH.

Malice is very slightly faster but still has higher top-end damage, making it more ideal for the MH.

Average damage. Top-end says very little.

But the general rule of thumb is, that you equip the weapon with the highest average damage in your main hand.

That post confused me too. The major benefit of HB glyph previously was the ability to use a single-disease rotation with extra Obliterates, but with the improved disease scaling and OB-heavy damage of 3.2 frost, I'm not sure that's viable.

Assuming an HB/BS/BS/OB - OB/OB/OB rotation hoping on Rime to reapply, you've got a roughly 50% chance of a Rime proc on each rotation. One extra OB per rotation doesn't seem worth losing the PS bonus on the other eight. On the other hand, if Rime gets a double proc chance on DW Obliterates, you're up to a 75%~ chance to get a Rime proc, which means 3 extra Obliterates per 4 rotations. That might close the gap.

Apologies if my math is way off here - either way, the question there stands, does X amount of extra Obliterates + the damage from HB exceed the damage of IT/PS/Blood Plague + the extra bonus damage on all those Obliterates? For the sake of math, I'm assuming single-target damage and not opening up the "HB Glyph on AoE fights" can of worms.

Ok, ill try to explain what Im doing a little more clearly.

As to why it "works" as more DPS, its assuming you are limited to 12 GCDs per 20, and it is simply using a free resource (Rime procs) to replace under performing ones (runes used for blood strike and Icy Touch). Instead of doing 4500ish damage with a blood strike or 3500ish with an IT, your doing 7000ish damage. The rune wasting is unfortunate, but your not getting that much mileage out of it, and wasting a Rime proc is worse, since its the equivilent of wasting 2 runes.

I break runes down into functions. The U and F runes are paired and only used for OB (outside of a starter use to get your diseases up). Those never change.

The blood runes are differentiated by function, you have one whose death runes are used to apply IT, and one which is always used to apply plague strike.

The blood rune that is used to apply plague strike is always used in that manner, alternating between PS and BS.

The rune that has a changing use can either be used for BS, IT, or HB.

So you have a rotation of:

OB>RP>OB>IT/BS/HB>BS>PS>RP

Now, the rules of application are actually relatively simple.

1. If your low on RP, always HB on the GCD after an OB when rime procs. Otherwise use rime procs after the 2nd OB
2. If your Frost Fever has less then 10 seconds left when the GCD after the 2nd OB comes up, IT
3. If your Frost Fever isnt about to run out, and you dont have a rime proc to use, BS.

The actual rune management takes care of itself. If you dont use the rune, it sits and is ready next GCD. Since its a death, and you are using OBs with Frost and Unholy runes, no worry about that.

The only case I could see having trouble would be if you get an itchy trigger finger and you having a sitting death rune. Then, if you are on a starter rotation refresh cycle, where the Frost Rune is coming up before the Unholy Rune, you might accidentally use that death rune and the frost rune to Obliterate early, which could screw up your rune refreshes. Plague Striking immediately after such an OB though basicly solves the problem though.

But yeah, it would be exceedingly difficult to keep track of everything going on if you were trying to figure out what to use when on the fly. But if you just use the rotation and obey the rules for IT/BS/HB useage, most of the stuff should take care of itself.

As far as I understand it, you replace a BS/IT gcd (depending on if the rune is Blood or Death at the point of time) with a free HB. The rune remains, and you continue with your priority. Doing so, you gain more dps since a HB does more damage than an IT or a BS.

Thats closer. Id describe the runes GCD use as a priority, where its HB>FF refresh>BS. The idea is that you never use IT unless you have to refresh FF.

You could just use BS with blood runes and IT with death runes whenever that GCD comes up and you dont have a HB, but your cheating yourself out of some damage by using unnecessary ITs. Its probably a pretty small amount, like 15dps, so if you need to work it that way for it to be user friendly, its not much of a compromise.

Would picking up 3/3 Morbidity be better with 2/5 Desolation or does 5/5 Desolation scale better, hence the choice?

EDIT: Also the FC/FC runeforge is different than the original post (RI/FC) which I was a little confused about. I wasn't sure if RI/FC was a typo or if FC uptime stayed about the same with only 1 weapon and the RI helped FF and IT damage, as well as the 2% additional mainhand increase. I haven't noticed too much of a difference in dps or FC uptime switching to RI mainhand yet, but I also haven't gotten any specific uptime numbers. Also, if FC only needs to be on offhand to achieve maximum uptime, CG might be interesting to fire off even more powerful DCs (which may even help UB scaling) especially when picking up Morbidity.

Anyone have any thoughts?

If you don't have Epidemic, using the Howling Blast glyph allows you to remove Icy Touch from the rotation resulting in an extra GCD every 20 seconds. If you are GCD capped in a Frost/Blood spec, you can use this rotation to generate more DPS.

HB -> OB -> PS -> BS -> Dump
HB -> OB -> BS -> PS -> Dump

If you get a rime proc, it looks like this:

HB -> OB -> PS -> BS -> Dump
RimeHB -> OB -> OB -> BS -> PS -> Dump

or this:

RimeHB -> OB -> OB -> PS -> BS -> Dump
HB -> OB -> BS -> PS -> Dump

A simple use of Blood Tap prior to the pull allows you to pull off these rotations. This way, your Rime proc is used to keep Frost Fever up so you can push an additional Obliterate into your rotation.

This seems much more efficient to use Rime procs to gain additional Obliterates and use Death Runes to keep up Blood Plague.

@Orlgin: That rotation uses twice as many PS, and uses half or 3/4th as many OBs (maybe not entirely accurate as it depends on Rime procs, but it's only gonna be as many OBs as Odii's rotation if you proc Rime from every 2 OBs - which isn't likely). Also, I think it's fairly safe to say that most/all frost specs will have Epidemic, at least so far most testing seems to point towards Unholy having stronger passives even without counting the effect of Epidemic.

Edit: Note: Odii miswrote the rotation in his second to last post, it's BS/PS, not BS>PS.

OB is better then pretty much everything else you can do, except keep both diseases up. The whole point of your rotation/priority should be to make sure OB fires on time, every time, whenever possible while still keeping up 2 diseases. Which is why epidemic is so mandatory, it means more OBs, and OBs mean more damage.

This is purely anecdotal, but I love the flexibility of the Deep Frost(0*/5*/1*), and ToT builds are a nice return to the 0/32/39 ish play style with HB being a main nuke on a proc, which makes timing important. I feel because they beefed up double rune usage for DW, you get a lot of involvement with logical-next rune usage, almost getting into a priority feel while rolling combos of hard hitting stikes. I made a quick vid(YouTube - Erraa 3.2 PTR DW Frost) of 3/51/17(Disease/Oblit/Frost Strike) because I was just that happy about how things felt with the way the build played out to me, I had only a few minutes to get a feel of it before starting the capture, so it was kinda spontaneous and the rotation is sloppy, but functional. Coming from a long period of being DW Unholy and enjoying it, I feel the Frost-based builds are too strong, and if they remain the same, to versatile to ignore.

I am pretty stoked Blizzard seems to have made amends to the fairly large Death Knight player base who enjoyed that spec when it was popular in 3.0

Relatively new to posting here, so go easy on me

I too was wondering about the math\thought process behind the FC/FC vs RI/FC debate. It was my impression from a post earlier in the thread that a dual FC increased uptime toward to regions of 80%+. Personally, I would imagine if that were the case, then its benefit in conjunction with [Darkmoon Card: Greatness], Death's Verdict (450str proc bonus), Sigil of Virulence (200str proc bonus) and DK 2PT9 set bonus (180str proc bonus).

Assuming a paltry 1800 str, and that the stars align and they all proc at once. The DK would sit in the neighborhood of 2900+ str. Add in a FC proc of 15% extra str with a 80%+ uptime and I honestly can't see RI coming out on top.

I understand we are trying to control the variables as much as possible, but a quick look says that if dual FC/FC has an 80%+ uptime in conjunction with the train of +str buffs it will pull ahead.

Anyone much more capable at the math feel like explaining this to me? I'm sure I'm not the only one questioning...

Simulators are showing me that for a frost build FC/RI is the best, and for unholy FC/FC is the best. (Post you quoted is in regard to unholy DW).

for Frost it increases FS and HB damage as well as IT / FF damage.

Since razorice got changed on PTR (at least for me it now stacks to 10 stacks for a total bonus of 10% more frost damage; at the cost of other classes not benefiting anymore), the extra damage is probably more than enough to outscale the increase in FC uptime.

I finally got to test out the 0/17/54 DC Dump build, and I loved the results from tonight. It was really fun to play on Hodir. The unique style made me not /snore at my keyboard tonight. I have a few questions regarding gear.

When it comes to DW haste is a given great DPS increase. My main DPS spec is usually a CC 51/0/20 Blood 2H so my gear is drenched with ArP. I know how haste is really good with Unholy and the Ghoul but is it worth it to just stay at full ArP instead of a full redesign on my gear especially since when the patch comes out I would be removing Glyph of the Ghoul for Glyph of Unholy Blight?

Because you'd be giving up a huge portion of your RP generation (glyph of IT). Of the three glyphs, I'd wager Ghoul comes out to the least of three evils to swap out for Unholy Blight: the ghoul is usually ~10% of your dps, so you're talking about a 2.8% dps loss, compared to an 8% gain to your main nuke, a 2.4% dps gain). This of course makes the comparison extremely close, and so other factors have to be considered. Since it seems that UB will scale better than the ghoul will, and the survivability issues of the ghoul in current content (other's words, not mine. I've had no issues thus far), the UB glyph may be swapped in for the ghoul glyph. If on the other hand any of my previous statements is found upon testing to be false, then it's better to keep the glyphs as they are.

In most of the current hard mode encounters, it seems rather easy to keep your ghoul alive, with the exception of Yogg+1 (or 0 for that matter) and Mimiron. In these situations I would safely say that UB would out scale ghoul glyph due to up time. On the other hand though, fights like Freya+3 Hodir and Thorim are rather easy to keep up your pet. For those the only time I would find UB glyph to out scale and to perform better would be during AOE situations, such as Freya's swarm, Hodir's ice blocks, and Thorim's arena. I would agree though in saying that in most cases, you would get a dps increase due to more AOE uptime. On the other hand though it can be argued that these AOE phases, don't tend to last for more then 20 seconds, which would include all Hard Mode Watchers.

Of course, brainfart on my side. I totally forgot the icy touch glyph is also used. (It gets even worse if you realise i'm actually using that spec with the IT glyph at the moment)..

In that case my guess would indeed be the glyph of the ghoul, although it actually adds more dps than you think. And the DC and UB glyph are probably weaker than you expect.

You'd have to simulate or theorycraft this to be sure, because looks are VERY decieving on this subject. I remember back in the 2H unholy thread people claimed that morbidity was a huge dps increase (15% more damage on your main RP dump !), while simple calculations show that its one of the weaker unholy talents (if you don't count the shorter CD on DnD).

@Skullxlord: We're discussing 3.2, where Unholy Blight is no longer an aoe ability but a passive damage boost (+20% over time) to Death Coil, and the glyph increases that bonus by 40% (bumping it up to 28%).

Edit: Some quick simulations suggest that the UB glyph would be better than the ghoul one if your ghoul uptime is less than 67%. (Using BiS ulduar gear, further scaling not taken into account)

I simulated different slow and fast weapons for the 3/51/17 3/5KM spec (can't find any spec that gives better dps on simulator).

In all cases, slow/slow is always better all the way down to comparing a ilevel245 (from Crusaders' Coliseum 25man) fast offhand versus a crafted ilevel200 slow offhand. Since we can pretty much assume that the crafted slow weapons or the tournament weapons are the minimum we test since they are available to everyone without relying on a drop, there is no point ever going for a fast offhand even after the patch 3.2, unless the stats difference is really good.

Here is part of the data illustrating this point, comparing a 2.6 versus a 1.6 offhand weapon (data used at the bottom):

With a ilevel232 slow main hand (178.8 dps, 2.6 speed), using for offhand:

178.8 (2.6): 7153 dps
163.3 (2.6): 7129 dps
156.6 (2.6): 7104 dps
143.3 (2.6): 7074 dps
196.6 (1.6): 7068 dps
178.8 (1.6): 7039 dps
163.3 (1.6): 7013 dps
156.6 (1.6): 6991 dps
143.3 (1.6): 6970 dps

Obviously, any weapons with 1.5 speed are even worse.

Stats used:

BP, Awareness, FC/RI

<character>
<stat>
<Strength>1900</Strength>
<Agility>200</Agility>
<Intel>38</Intel>
<Armor>14300</Armor>
<AttackPower>500</AttackPower>
<HitRating>270</HitRating>
<CritRating>770</CritRating>
<HasteRating>175</HasteRating>
<ArmorPenetrationRating>300</ArmorPenetrationRating>
<ExpertiseRating>225</ExpertiseRating>
</stat>
<weapon>
<count>2</count>
<mainhand>
<dps>178.8</dps>
<speed>2.6</speed>
</mainhand>
<offhand>
<dps>178.8</dps>
<speed>2.6</speed>
</offhand>
</weapon>
<EP><base>50</base></EP>
<Set>
<T72PDPS>0</T72PDPS>
<T74PDPS>0</T74PDPS>
<T82PDPS>0</T82PDPS>
<T84PDPS>0</T84PDPS>
<T72PTNK>0</T72PTNK>
<T74PTNK>0</T74PTNK>
<T82PTNK>0</T82PTNK>
<T84PTNK>0</T84PTNK>
</Set>
<ChaoticSkyflareDiamond>1</ChaoticSkyflareDiamond>

Priority used:

<FrostFever></FrostFever>
<BloodPlague></BloodPlague>
<Obliterate></Obliterate>
<BloodStrike></BloodStrike>
<FrostStrike></FrostStrike>
<Rime></Rime>

Hmmm funny. 1/52/18 did better for me (UA and maxed BCB).

From what i've seen (using gearset 2 in the simulator), the ranking for the disputable talents comes down to:

UA > BCB > Subv > KM

Not 100% sure about UA simulator wise, but I feel its somewhat underappreciated in the simulator. In a real raid you can pop it when it benefits the most and get a lot more out of it. (although that comes with the downside of a suboptimal potential uptime).

[e]: Just to add that this is of course very gear dependant, and the differences are absolute minimal. So dont take this as a confirmed set rule.
If i have time one of these days ill go try out a scaling gearset. Maybe take the current frost 2H BiS items and try something.