Scuzoid

I use ShamWow_Enh on my shaman alt (ShamWow_Enhance - Addons - Curse for those who don't know what I'm talking about). One of the DK's in my guild is having issues with a priority system over a rotation system as frost. He uses power aura's, but he's still annoyed that he can't get the hang of KM+Rime. I recall a thread in the mod forums (I think it was an Enh shaman mod thread that turned into a "Can we make a priority mod for all classes?") but can't seem to find it anymore. I was wondering if anyone had seen any new mods come up that can prioritize a DK rotation. I've tried power auras, need to know, and tell me when, but they're all normal buff/debuff mods that expect the player to know what to do when 2 or more conditions coexist. That's fine for me tanking or unholy dpsing, but seems to be an issue for our frost DK.

 

sweberry

I'm pretty sure he's talking about 17/54 DC-spam, since they don't want a build centered around DC (that's supposed to be a filler). That's why it's shadow then frost, not frostshadow!

 

Shylaa

I'am currently using a frost dw spec with 2* Malice. entchantments are FC/RI. However I'am not sure if RI is the best solution, because it takes so long to stack it up.

Has anyone ever considered to use berserker as a weapon entchant?

Tests on dummies and in simulators shor that FC/FC is inferior to FC/RI with makes sense for stationary fights. I guess that FC/FC will be better when you have more movement and target switching.

But whats about FC/Berserker ? Anyone testet this ?

 

grimLox

Yes, UH DW thread. I believe there is even a link to said thread on OP.

 

Afabar

I have make a quick integration on my local version of the sim. It will be included it in the next release.

Using :Template: Frost 3-51-17, Priority: Frost, Presence: Blood, Sigil: Virulence.

RuneEnchant: FallenCrusader / Razorice
DPS 7693

RuneEnchant: FallenCrusader / Berserking
DPS 7560

RuneEnchant: FallenCrusader / FallenCrusader
DPS 7504

RuneEnchant: FallenCrusader / Cinderglacier
DPS 7411


Keep in mind that the sim assume the Razorice is at full stack at the beginning of the fight.

 

concept84

Wouldn't it be smarter to sim with Awareness over Virulence, since it has been shown to be better than Virulence?

 

Afabar

Virulence would be the best case scenario as it give strengh for fallen crusader, but even with that, it's behind.
Before making conclusion, I have implemented as it could proc from ToT, but I have not test it my self.

 

bighandxyz

hi, long reader first time poster.

has there been any math done regarding T9 and frost DW? especially in the case of GoD?

since you are missing a bloodstrike on your rotation, how much will it affect your dps?

 

Syrellia

I tried simulators and it suggested that dropping 1 point from CotG to put into UBA is superior than dropping 1 point from either KM or BCB. The DPS difference is about 100 dps, so it's really up to personal choice.

Regarding GCD starvation by dropping 1 point in CotG, the first rotation will still be complete:

Starting with 10 RP (HoW), assuming glyph of IT:

IT (32.5) PS (42.5) OB (60) BS (70) BS (80) FS (48) FS (16) OB (33.5) OB (51) FS (19) OB (36.5) FS (4.5) - 12 GCD, leaving 1 free for either Rime or another HoW (Yes, HoW has 20s cd so even if you used it at first of the rotation you'll be able to use it again).

Second rotation starts off with Blood Tap + UBA, so you'll start off with 20 extra RP. Also I am a blood elf so I can use my racial to generate extra RPs. After the first few rotations, you should get plenty of extra RPs due to druid's regen and possible AMS soak.

Regarding Berserking enchants: It would be great if it was implemented in the sims. The tests I did in Unholy DW section is not relevant to DW Frost, because if the offhand strikes from ToT procs Berserking, we can expect the effectiveness of Berserking to be much higher.

 

Brachamul

Hello,

I've been testing Frost DW extensively recently, and have a few questions i'd like to put on the table.

My character gears primarily for tanking, but spends around half his time in raid as a damage dealer. My gear is mostly ilvl 226 from ulduar 25, with a few ilvl 219 and ilvl 232 items from ulduar 10 and ulduar hard modes. I have about 3900ap and 26% crit self buffed. My weapons were acquired recently and are ilvl 200 (MH) and ilvl 219 (OH). Both are slow at 2.5 and 2.6 speed.

From my testing, i have achieved about 3500dps on a dummy boss.
44% of my damage came from Obliterate
25% of my damage came from Frost Strike
14% of my damage came from Melee
10% of my damage came from Howling Blast
6-7% of my damage came from Diseases

My build is 10/54/7.

My question is as follows :
- If i was to take the Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade talents, i would increase my melee damage by 20% (necrosis) and 15% (blood-caked blade). This 35% damage increase would be a total 5% damage increase for my character. Can this really compete with Bladed Armor, which grants me around 400ap (about +13% ap)?

 

• Diello

The dummy can't give you worthwhile results. Melee will be a much much higher percentage of your damage when you're in a raid. With full raid buffs and debuffs involved you will get entirely different percentages and Necrosis and BCB go way up in value. Do some real testing and see what happens.

 

concept84

Necrosis and BCB scale very well as gear gets better, while Bladed Armor pretty much stays the same. At Ulduar/Toc gear levels Necrosis and BCB are far better choices.

 

Rikdot

The T92P value in this is incorrect. It has an 45 sec internal cooldown and after that a 50% proc chance , the internal is not implied in the current Simulator. So its overvalued.

 

Ðemøsthenes

Given the stats shown at top of post I get these numbers breakdowns from each other now as I am not sure of cap on any of these they may be wrong but,
Str>Arm Pen =1.4
Arm Pen>Crit = 1.28
Crit>Haste= 1.14
Now as I have read and to my knowledge hasn't been put to rest there are a few questions I have
1. Is awareness better then virulence for both specs 53/18 and 3/51/17?
2. At beginning of post it was said that most promising spec for dw is the 53/18 but in real game time it would appear that 3/51/17 is ahead of this, why though, to my knowledge dps per talent point is better served in 53/18.
4 What is Arm pen cap for both of these spec as oblit and melee are some of the main dmging attacks.
5 It has been covered that 8 percent hit is all that is needed and because of talents we only need 5 percent, but there are arguements that spell hit cap should be achieved, has any point been proven either way?

 

• Asphyxialol

1 - I believe it was Darkside or Doc who posted that Virulence would be a better choice on any fight which required AoE as a key component (Thorim and Freya as examples), however on on a stand still and nuke a single target type fight that Awareness still edges it out.

2 - This has also been shown throughout the thread. In my 5,000 hour parse I showed 3/3 BCB totaling 15 more dps than 3/3 Subversion. BCB is also greatly diminished on any fights requiring heavy movement where you are not on the boss full time, and also diminishes in AoE situations. Subversion is a mere 15 dps lower and still provides the massive threat reduction, which is useful on both single target and aoe situations.

The two points moved from Frost to Unholy to pick up the BCB are negligible and showing very little difference in DPS (ie, in my ITT based 3/51/17 I took the points out of MC, as my simulations all showed 2/3 BCB was dominant to 2/2 MC). Many people have been using 3/53/15 as well for this reason.

3 - As frost builds do not have the passive 10% Armor Pen that Blood has the soft cap (w/ [Mjolnir Runestone]) is then 566 Armor Pen and the hard cap remains 1,231. However Frost Armor Pen is not weighted as highly as Blood's Armor Pen is, so hitting the soft cap shouldn't be a major concern.

4 - This comes down to preference. The simulator will tell you that you will be able to achieve higher DPS by not hitting the spell hit and rather focusing on other areas and it also comes down to spec. Missing an IT in an IIT spec is not a huge dps loss, missing your Pestilence in a GoDisease rotation is (especially considering if its later on and you had already reapplied your max diseases via proc'd diseases and have been carrying those with Pestilence). As a matter of personal preference I aim for the spell hit cap and the expertise soft cap as a means to make my dps much more sustained and predictable rather than sporadic (in the event the RNG gods like me, which rarely happens regardless).

 

Sealpup

Thank you for your informative answers. I am not arguing with your simulated results (i.e. I trust they are correct), yet in all the actual combat parses I have looked, using the aforementioned spec, blood-caked blade provides a mere 0.3 to 0.4% per point. To that end I cannot see why merciless combat isn't better for the 2 points investment. What are the others' thoughts about this? 2/2 MC or 2/3 BCB?

 

• Asphyxialol

I have just ran a simulation of 3/53/15 vs 3/51/17 the difference being 2/2 MC and 0/3 BCB to 0/2 MC and 2/3 BCB while using my current DW setup (I'm not sure if I logged in Blood or DW gear, but DW is relatively mediocre in the grand scale of BiS - 3810 AP, 24% Crit, 26 Expertise, 288 Hit, 2x [Malice] FC/RI and Awareness unbuffed) these were the results (everything minus Draenei Aura and BL checked)...

Ability	Total	%	Landed	Hit %	Crit %	Miss %	Average
Obliterate	731235102	29.3	71578	40.9	59.1	0	10215.9
Frost Strike	555532060	22.2	76160	47.4	52.6	0	7294.3
Main Hand	315909513	12.6	165810	52.8	31.9	15.3	1905.3
Off Hand	182473934	7.3	165847	52.8	32	15.2	1100.3
Blood Strike	139803309	5.6	35726	55.8	44.2	0	3913.2
Howling Blast	137896021	5.5	14510	1.3	98.6	0	9503.5
Necrosis	99721880	4	331657	100	0	0	300.7
Frost Fever	92541076	3.7	112167	100	0	0	825
Blood Plague	84225603	3.4	112177	100	0	0	750.8
Icy Touch	61251948	2.5	17917	46.7	53.3	0.1	3418.6
Plague Strike	45769251	1.8	17920	59.1	40.9	0	2554.1
Blood Caked Blade	45325069	1.8	66533	100	0	0	681.2
Ghoul	4242697	0.2	6498	87.2	12.8	0	652.9
Raz	1492623	0.1	165847	100	0	0	9
Horn	0	0	481	0	0	0	0

This is the 3/51/17 without MC and pulled 6,937 dps over 100h. Obviously this factors in *no* downtime against the boss (ie no movement) and no haste reduction auras (like Vezax), showing approximately .9% dps increase per point in BCB.

Ability	Total	%	Landed	Hit %	Crit %	Miss %	Average
Obliterate	752893316	30.2	71629	41.4	58.6	0	10511
Frost Strike	572485079	22.9	76199	46.9	53.1	0	7513
Main Hand	315396771	12.6	165862	52.9	31.8	15.2	1901.6
Off Hand	182302169	7.3	166068	52.9	31.9	15.1	1097.8
Howling Blast	141654517	5.7	14475	1.1	98.8	0	9786.1
Blood Strike	139817532	5.6	35757	55.8	44.2	0	3910.2
Necrosis	99583135	4	331930	100	0	0	300
Frost Fever	92400746	3.7	112253	100	0	0	823.1
Blood Plague	84118241	3.4	112241	100	0	0	749.4
Icy Touch	62801060	2.5	17937	47.1	52.9	0	3501.2
Plague Strike	45729047	1.8	17942	59.5	40.5	0	2548.7
Ghoul	4136976	0.2	6327	87.2	12.8	0	653.9
Raz	1494612	0.1	166068	100	0	0	9
Horn	0	0	441	0	0	0	0

The DPS here is 6930, not a substantial difference, and it obviously does better on movement oriented fights, or fights where you will have extended periods of execute range (like Yogg, as an example).

The difference is so small it wouldn't even be noticeable with the variety of different RNG, but the way I figured it is that when learning hard modes (which I was when these tests were initially ran, in poorer gear and thus the spread was a little larger) that I may not even live to the execute range (a good example was Thorim's Chain Lightning and how our melee *always* managed to mass chain it, or roots on Freya HM where I would be rooted in seeds and thus die, or how I am on Immortal Guardian duty more than on Yogg during Yogg HM attempts, or on XT-002 where my RNG has always failed and I manage to get 3-4+ Searing Lights or Gravity Bombs a fight so I won't have full uptime in execute range, etc.).

 

Syrellia

Comparing builds with and without MC in simulator is not very wise. First of all I don't know how simulators handle MC, so if you know, please enlighten me. Second of all, for fights that the last 35% phase is incredibly long, MC proves to be your best friend (Mimiron & Yogg-saron last phase). Most of the fights you can jack up dps in the last 35% by popping all cooldowns left. For this reason, MC is always taken over other talents, even though it does not do anything before the boss hit the 35% mark.

If you would like to run sims to compare Subversion vs. BCB, then be careful what they actually scales with. If you get gears with a lot of ArP, 5% hit mark, poor haste, it favors Subversion because of obvious reasons: You just won't proc BCB as much.

Another thing is Subversion gets modified by 4xt8 and Sigil of Awareness, both of which may get abandoned once we get to tier 9. Taking this into account, it's hard to say whether BCB is vastly superior or simply a few dps increase over Subversion.

 

Octopi

The threat reduction appears to be undervalued by the community in my opinion.

There is a lot that can be said of ignoring(for the most) threat issues with DW Frost builds, especially early encounter engagements.

 

Syrellia

In order to produce 7k dps, the threat produced would be about 5k - 5.5k tps (according to sims and real raid experiences). A decent tank can usually exceed that mark by a lot, they can usually produce 6k - 6.5k tps.
- Yes, Subversion is useful in many situations, especially when the tanks cannot handle the threats you are producing.
- No, if you want to maximize your dps then Subversion is not your talents of choice.
- However - the difference in DPS is very small, so it's entirely up to personal choice.

If you're in a good guild with a decent tanks I don't see why you should pick talents purely for threats reduction. Also to add: BCB gets buffs from blood lust, while Subversion does not. BCB also gets hit by haste debuff, but Subversion does not.

 

Sealpup

Thank you for the sim results and helpful answers Asphyxialol. That about clears it all up for me.

Re: Syrellia, I personally take subversion not for the threat reduction but for +crit bonus. If not for the 3 points in subversion, however, where would you spend them in a non-improved icy talons build?

 

Brachamul

I'm beginning to understand. I also realized that the dummy i was hitting was below 35%, which greatly increased my Obliterates and Frost Strikes compared to Melee.

Thanks for the replies.

 

• Asphyxialol

If you pay attention to the DPS in the simulator, the last 35 hours of the simulation (or 35% of the simulation) your OB / FS / HB are affected (as shown by the slightly increasing DPS that casually goes up the last 35% of the calculation). Or, alternatively, you could simply run a standard test *without* 2 points spent anywhere (which we can use one of the above examples for) and do the math by hand yourself. You would factor in that 35% of the overall damage is affected by 1.12x the damage to receive the additional damage output from MC and then it would come out to the same calculations as above.

From the above examples the 3/51/17 set will not have MC and the addition of BCB has no effect on the difference in damage from MC.

So, MC affects IT, OB, HB, and FS from 35% of target life to death and multiply their existing damage by 12% (1.12). From my first test these were the values -
Obliterate - 731235102
Frost Strike - 555532060
Howling Blast - 137896021
Icy Touch - 61251948

You take 35% of the overall damage and then multiply that by 12% and then subtract the raw 35% value to find the increase in overall damage done... as an example for OB:

731235102 * 0.35 = 255932285.7 * 1.12 = 286644159.984 - 255932285.7 = 30711874.284 increase in total damage from MC, for a total of 761946976.284. This alone is is a 1.0123% increase in DPS, before factoring in KM/Rime HBs, IT, or FS. Doing *very* raw napkin math (more or less based off of percents because I'm lazy), FS would be 0.767%, HB would be 0.19% and IT would be 0.0864% with MC, totaling 2.0557% in DPS (where, in my example, BCB was worth 1.8%).

Obviously these value change based on rotation (as an example I run GoDisease, thus Armor Penetration is worth more to me than a typical IIT build) and whether it favors haste or arm pen, or whether you have 4pc t8 or not.

Regarding Subversion vs BCB and its affect on sigil vs 4pc t8, this is true, but consider the extremely small difference it makes in a parse. If I remember right the math showed that the 4pc bonus on a blood build did roughly 1-2% difference in DPS when the strike it affected pulls about the same as OB+BS in most IIT builds, making it a truly insignificant difference in actual output. Regarding sigil - the math has already been done showing the difference between Virulence and Awareness being so insubstantial that most DKs are simply continuing to use Awareness and getting the sigil last.

I ran two more parses now, one as 0/53/18 and one as 3/53/15, both without the 4pc bonus, and the DPS I saw was 6798 from 0/53/18 and 6835 from 3/53/15. As I said earlier the difference was 15 dps lower using Subversion, now it is 37 dps more, mostly due to the stat upgrades (not that I have a lack of haste, I sit with around 230 haste and I believe 226 armor pen not factoring in Mjolnir).

As I said though, when it comes to ~30 dps, the damage difference is so minuscule that it is hardly worth considering as RNG alone could sway the fight by a means of a couple hundred DPS to begin with. What matters is the passive bonus you get. Considering I don't have UA and thus I am entirely reliant on procs the whole 'use all your cooldowns during 35% to get the biggest benefit' doesn't really apply to me. Also, I don't believe there is a single fight we use Bloodlust late with the exception of Algalon, or Steelbreaker (which is only late comparative to the fight, not to his personal health), which again just puts the math in my favor of BCB over MC.

Also, in regards to the post you made while running the sims for my post (the threat post) - decent tanks should be able to consistently out-threat a dk pushing about 5-6.5k threat? I will refer you to this post: Premonition - Sen'jin (US) - View Single Post - 3.2 Tank Tests

That threat compares (from the beta, mind you) the TPS generation of the 4 tank classes in 3.2 on Patchwerk. The Patchwerk dummies on the PTR are arguably the best means to gauge TPS and DPS considering there are no interrupts, no raid wide damage, no movement, nothing. It is simply stand there and blow everything you have to kill it. In these examples the two classes with the least TPS would have issues holding aggro over a dk without subversion (druid and dk). The warrior (Xav) is considered to be one of the top TPS warriors in the world, if you've ever seen one of his videos you would know why, and he could even have issues variant on the RNG of his abilities. The only class which could consistently keep threat over you despite your spikes, and allow you to start in the beginning of a match and have 100% presence during the encounter is the paladin tank. The addition of subversion to your build allows you not only to start early into an encounter, allowing longer dps time and a higher percentage of presence on the fight, but it allows you to have the cushion necessary to spike your damage during a period of high procs or lust, etc.

Now, personally, even with subversion, I have been known to pull in the beginning of the fight due to a string of crits, or heavy procs at the start of a match, or poor RNG from my tanks, etc. and I greatly value the cushion of room later in the fight when I have my maximized dots ticking, and MC is active, and I have been riding the tanks threat for... a pretty good portion of the fight on most fights (obviously excluding stand still and nuke oriented fights like XT or Vezax).

 

Meygaera

I run a 2/51/18 GoD build and decided to compare the % dmg BCB yields compared to Subversion. I compared my logs of multiple iron council hardmode wipes because its pretty much a single target dps fight, there are some times when I am in a rune of power but I don't think it would skew a comparison between subversion and BCB.:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I believe I was blood spec in a few of these. In the second log attempts only 1 and 9 are frost. There were a total of 9 attempts that I took my averages from, attempts 1-7 from log 1 and attempts 1 and 9 from log 2. I disregard the kills because that was not done in hardmode.

I would take my total BCB dmg from each attempt, divide by 3 to get the %dps increase gained from 1 talent and I think it averaged out to be around 0.96%.

For subversion I'm not totally sure if this is right, for 3% crit increase on obliterate but since obliterate bonus is actually 145% I multiplied 3% crit increase by 1.45 and got 4.35% as my factor. I then totaled my obliterate damage and multiplied by .0435 in order to get the % dps gain from 1 point in subversion. By this calculation I got 1.63% dps increase on average.

In conclusion, 1 point in subversion yielded 1.63% dps and bcb .93% dps. So I for me I should probably go 3/51/17. I am a little worried about how I calculated the % dps increase for subversion it seemed really high, and my BCB seemed really low. If anyone has any comments or concerns on that please let me know.

When today's log gets posted I'll have a little more to work with, I did about 3 attempts as blood and 3 as frost. I think these new ones should be more accurate because I'm perfecting my rotation more with each attempt.

 

• Asphyxialol

My parses show that, as DW, BCB does anywhere between 1.6% and 2.1% of my damage on any given single target fight with 2/3 (comparing XT, Assembly, and Jaraxxus primarily).

As an example here is my Jaraxxus log - WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

The log itself is a very solid log, I believe I was on Jaraxxus pretty much 100% of the fight and the damage is not inflated by hitting other available targets (1,714,712 to Jaraxxus, 41,084 to Infernal and 13,466 to Mistress of Pain - ie approximately 3% of my personal DPS was to something other than Jaraxxus). Keep in mind the percentages on the parse itself are incorrect as it factors in ghoul and AotD, so I will break down the BCB percentage for you...

1,724,793 total damage and 36,314 BCB damage = 2.1% BCB damage, or 1.05% per point, and this is *very* slightly off from a full single target, where it would be about 1.08% on a pure single target, but due to the nature of the fight diseases / HB had hit other targets.

I will take the standard hit / crit from that log to use as my data when doing some rough calculations. I will figure crit without Subversion as 56% and crit with Subversion at 65% and use 100 MH and OH strikes to keep it even.

Avg MH Hit: 3818
Avg MH Crit: 8903
Avg OH Hit: 2382
Avg OH Crit: 6096

Damage w/out Subversion: 1,112,744
Damage w/ Subversion: 1,191,935
Difference: 79,191

This is a gain of 7.12% on OB. In my GoDisease parse OB was worth 38.6% of my overall personal dps (ie, no AotD / Ghoul), making the effective boost of 7.12% worth 2.74832% of my DPS, or about .916% per point vs the 1.08% of BCB, a difference of .164% dps per point in a fight with virtually no interruptions to my rotation.