teiglin

This has got to be the most ridiculous misconception I hear tossed around. It's not top end damage that matters for strikes; it's average weapon damage. If one weapon does 1-500 damage and another does 491-499, it should be pretty obvious which one will provide higher dps, regardless of the former's higher top end damage.

Anyway, as with all those other abilities you mentioned, dual wield strikes will do more damage with weapons that have higher damage ranges. First of all, weapon damage is not where most of your strike damage comes from. Let's say you're Obliterating with Malice (313-582 or 447.5 average damage) and have 6.5k AP, and consider the mainhand only (offhand will have a slightly lower percentage of weapon-based damage due to NoCS multiplying flat bonuses). The weapon damage component is 447.5+2.4*6500/14=1562, and final damage without OB glyph, diseases or other multipliers is .8*1562+467.2=1717. Changing to Remorse (187-349 damage or 268 on average) reduces the strike to 1573, which is only an 8.4% loss of damage even though the weapon damage dropped by 40%. With sigil of awareness, the difference in OB damage between the two is barely 7% (though I don't imagine many people will use it for frost builds). I'm not arguing that the loss there is insignificant, but it's not nearly as large as you might think when just comparing the weapons' tooltips.

Seondly, claiming that weapon dps doesn't matter is ridiculous. Resource-limited strikes are not the only source of damage; white damage will be at least 20% or so of your overall damage. You can do more dps with a faster, higher dps weapon even if your strikes do less damage.

Ignoring BCB, you want the slowest, highest-dps weapons you can get--but there is a tradeoff between additional strike damage provided by a slower, lower-dps weapon and higher white damage from a faster, higher-dps weapon.

 

kidpreacher

How does Icy talons and Unholy not affect Slow/Slow better than Fast/Fast as your total weapon damage remains higher while increasing your haste by 15 percent. Seems like Slow/Slow would benefit more than Fast/Fast, I don't have the math, but I think the type of haste increase is always more beneficial for Slow/Slow, you can check shaman threads for more specifics on it.

I am aware Mut rogues use slow/Fast, but that's for poison applications which don't work for us anyways, because we aren't applying anything. My point was Mutilate is better with Slow/Slow, though the loss of dps on mutilate is made up for it on the faster application of poisons, but their difference in speeds is marginal.

As for combat rogues I was speaking solely on their main hand as the point I was trying to counter was fast/fast equates equal dps to slow/slow, but thanks for pointing that out.

Teigan, I meant higher damage range which is what you pointed out I simply used the wrong phrase. My point was that using a 280-480 weapon with a slow speed was better than getting a 186-300 fast weapon that provides more dps. I apologize for my wording I would edit it but than it would look poorly. I meant total high end weapon range. The higher the beginning and ending damage the better it is for those skills.

Finally if the trade off being equal Fast/Fast and Slow/Slow is ridiculous. You have 4 attacks that gain from Slow/Slow FS/OB/BS and if you spec into BCB (I don't see Frost/Unholy beating out Frost/Blood though) and two attack that benefits from Fast/Fast Necrosis and White.

Let's take the percentages of tested DW,

Frost Strike is 20-25 percent of your damage
Obliterate is 20-25 percent of your damage
BS is 10-15 percent of your damage.
BCB is garbage, but 1.5 percent on a regular basis


Melee is 20 percent of your total dps
necrosis is 7 percent.

Now I don't need to do the math as we can see pretty evidently that you benefit a larger portion of your total dps by going slow/slow over Fast/Fast. Granted Slow/Fast might have a benefit with RI on main hand and FC on Offhand to cause more FC procs, but I don't see it winning out over Slow/Slow with max Beginning and Ending Damage (just so I don't screw up and type the wrong thing again).

 

• Darkside

Slow and fast weapons have equal DPS at equal ilevels. Haste increases weapon DPS by a static percentage that is the same for slow weapons or fast weapons; therefore, it benefits everything equally.

Can we stop rehashing this discussion now?

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

 

Sylari

Bloody strikes is out of reach of most normal threat of tharassian builds and I think BS spam has already shown to be inferior, doubling the disease modifier from live is still a fairly huge buff though, bit of a stretch to call it "nerfed to oblivion"

 

Whatevr

We talked about it earlier how using BS for death runes can cause problems in the rotation by making it too long and not giving enough time for RP dump and HB rime proc. I don't think affects us very much at all besides dropping the damage of an ability that doesn't play a huge role in our overall damage.

 

Valimar

It's still better than it is on live, "Nerfing it into Oblivion" is a bit of an overdramatic statement.

That, and Bloody Strikes was out of reach of a decent DW Frost Build anyway.

 

Syrellia

Just so you know, Slow weapons actually proc FC more than Fast weapon does. This is due to how ppm mechanic works. Please look up WoWWiki for more information on it. I'm not sure what proc system does RI uses, but usually it should be up at all times in a stationary fight anyway. In more mobile fights where you switch targets constantly, or you have to AoE, FC pulls forward.CG can be used in AoE situation too given that you're smart enough to use up CG procs on Howling Blast.

Also it doesn't help to just state that "look up shaman's threads for more specific information". Please specify where you found the information or prove it yourself. I do believe that haste affects Slow or Fast weapon equally.

I have seen Mut rogues with Fast/Fast pre 3.1 (2x Webbed Death) due to how instant poison mechanic works (didn't base on ppm mechanic back then). I do think that they use slow/fast right now because of the poison on fast weapon they can still take advantage of.

It's not that I don't agree with slow/slow being the best setup for DW, but you should back it up with some Maths or some 'actual' testing, i.e. raid test. Dummy tests show nothing because in raid setting you can earn some more buffs which aren't available in dummy testing. Example is Ebon Plague affects magic damage such as Icy Touch, Frost Strike, diseases etc. -%armor debuff also affects Obliterate, Blood Strikes and Melee Strikes as well. Also, the stats (AP, strength, crit etc.) scaling may also vary differently between skills (you receive those buffs in raid), hence making it impossible to use dummy test value to reflect the "best possible" builds.

I'm just saying this to everyone who uses Dummy Test to show how different each builds are to one another. Yes they are different, but the differences won't be the same in raid. The mechanics (i.e. how things work) can be found using Dummy testing though.

 

midnightwinter

Have we seen enough of how DW feels yet to get a feel for trinket selection?
Will FotfF be a viable choice trinket wise? I was considering pairing it with Greatness. Not sure though, I currently also have Wrathstone and am working on the Mjolnirs and was wondering which people reckon will be a wiser call come 3.2.
Is it looking like the stat weights for 2h frost dps are still sound when considering a deep frost, shallow blood ToT build?

 

phantazum

I tested this to see if it was true. I had Torment of the Banished in the main hand and at first i had Hailstorm in the off hand and was pulling around 3.2k dps. I dropped it for the only hard hitting weapon i could get with out any work Reaper of Dark Souls and improved my dps by 300.

Slow/Slow is better.

 

Komiya

Well it depends on your sigil choice. From my experience on PTR with 0/53/18 double disease, if I use vengeful heart, FS percentage is roughly the same as OB (both around 25%). However if I use awareness, OB will increase dramatically to over 30%. Interestingly SoA is significantly better than SoVH from the many testing I have done. I can't provide the math to demonstrate it yet, but I suspect the recent nerf to SoVH and the mechanism of SoA on DW OB make SoA superior to SoVH.

 

Maraxus

Its clear that blizz wants to make sure that this time we will not find out wird builds/rotations like many times before. They will do what is needed to keep DW deep frost.

Its fine.

 

Valtiel

I guess we may have to expect a SoA nerf in case. This is the worry of the 2h Frost aficionados: double dips from DW builds and general changed to keep the chaos that DW builds always become will bring a tsunami of small nerfs and twists that will slowly destroy the "underdog" specc. If 380 extra damage is too much because DW double dips it to, say 500, Blizzard's answer will always be that of bringing that 380 to 250 before changing the coding of DW mechanics.


And Maraxus, the definition of "fine" is subjective. Blizzard stepped in to "provide" a viable DW build when there already was one ingame, thanks to the things that slip between their planning. One of the most fascinating aspects of Death Knights is that, compared to most other classes, there was a huge numbers of possible builds and rotation that brough comparable results. 3.1 thinned the spectrum, but there was still at least 2 different options per tree. 3.2 seems to be hell bent on shoenailing you into a talent point by talent point forced choice, which may be "fine" for balance but in my humble opinion is depressing for fun.

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

 

Nizari

Well I'm on the PTR trying to find out how a deathcoil/Unholy Blight build would work out 0/17/54 However a few things I've noticed, the glyph for unholy blight is bugged... and ALL single rune abilities are generating 10 RP no matter what you glyph/talent. At the moment have talented plague strike and glyphed/talented icy touch for 15 and 25 respective RP per cast and I am just getting 10 RP on all of them, making testing hard to do >.<

Not sure on the way the unholy blight glyph is worded if it means, that "20%" of death coil gets 40% more (i.e 28% of death coils damage) or it takes whatever it is ticking for, and increases that by 40%.... As it is atm it is $% on the ptr >.<

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/419258FqvWj.png

 

Xentik

In my calculations originally I treated the glyph's effect as (1 + UnholyBlight * (1 + UnholyBlightGlyph)), leading to a modifier of 28% now with the reduction from 30 to 20%.

Edit: You never suggested it was additive, oops. Anyway as is stated below by Vinclass, there is no difference between the two.

Re: Slow vs Fast Offhand

I haven't had time to do full numbers on BS and Ob, but I have done a quick approximation using FS's results. Changing from a 178.8 dps fast offhand to a 178.8dps slow offhand results in about an 10-12% increase in the offhand contribution to FS. This is roughly 1/3 of the total damage of FS (assuming identical MH/OHs), and hence we see an increase of 3-4% in FS damage, and correspondingly a 3-4% increase in FS DPS. If we assume BS and Ob would have a similar 3-4% increase from such an OH switch, then we have a 3-4% increase in our total strike based DPS.

Since the weapon DPS hasn't changed, white damage won't be affected either way, so the only other variable left is what you would have tried to improve by using a fast offhand. The % enhancement needed in the offhand would be:

OHEnhNeeded = Strike%Enh * %ofDPSBasedonStrikes / %ofDPSenhancedbyFastOffHand

Lets assume for the sake of argument that 50% of our DPS comes from strikes, and that 20% comes from white damage. Taking that with the 3-4% and assuming we buff, say, 30% of our total DPS with the Fast OH we get:

OHEnhNeeded = 3-4% * 0.5 / 0.3 = 5-6.7%

The larger percentage of damage done by strikes, correspondingly larger the OHEnhNeeded result becomes.

 

Vinclass

100 damage * .20 = 20 * 1.4 = 28 damage
100 damage * .28 = 28 damage

Am I missing something?

 

• Darkside

No, the two options posted by Nizari are in fact the same thing.

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

 

Odii

Blood strike was rather overpowered in the first test build:

.4*2*1.45*1.2=1.392 weapon damage with bloody strikes, glyph, and 2 disease bonus. This is transparently absurdly high for a one rune ability

Now its:

.4*1.5*1.2*1.15=.828 weapon damage with bloody strikes, glyph, and 2 diseases.

Live it is:

.4*1.25*1.45*1.2=.87 weapon damage. So right now their is a mild nerf to blood strike with bloody strikes for a frost/blood hybrid. No big loss.

The change I think was necessitated by an unholy/blood spec, here is what BS damage would be if bloody strikes wasnt reduced with 3 diseases:

1.2*1.75*1.45=1.218

 

kidpreacher

It is true that dummy testing is flawed you get a parry in there from time to time as well, but remember we are simply trying to find the mechanics at this point and not trying to hammer out the best spec at this point. For example with the recent nerf to UB's DC contribution it's almost assured now that Deep frost is the only way to go when DW, as FS will be a better expenditure of our rune power.

I can't find anything on FC being a ppm based attack, not that I don't believe it is. I was under the impression it was, just never sat down to do the math to verify it. As for haste having the same flat effect on both fast and slow weapons, I will admit I was incorrect in my understanding of the way haste works. I was running the calculations without lowering the weapon damage per swing, which it seems haste does. So I apologize for being incorrect in that regard. As for raid buffs benefiting weapons, I am not sure what you meant there. Slow/slow and Slow/Fast and Fast/Fast will receive the same raid buffs so if Slow/Slow is better without raid buffs it would be better with raid buffs.

However if we come to the understanding that Slow/Slow is a 3-4 percent increase in on each of the swings it benefits as stated in the above posts, than we can get away from the Slow/Fast or Fast/Fast argument all together, and move forward onto things that will benefit us such as runeforging. RI is a flat 2 percent bonus weapon damage proc with a increase of up to 5 percent in Frost vulnerability. I have heard that it's on a ppm basis, but in a 10 minute test it never dropped off and was up to 5 stack within the first 30 seconds.

With FC being a ppm (if someone could verify this that would be great, I looked but couldn't find anything), and RI being a ppm (again need to verify) but based largely on weapon damage. I do find it odd that it doesn't matter which hand you put RI in it is always based on Main Hand weapon damage when it procs. I still cannot locate the ppm of it. However, that leaves us with the main crux of the discussion should now be based on whether Cinderglacier (20 percent increase to frost and shadow damage for 2 attacks) or Razorice for a flat 5 percent increase in frost damage, and the random additional 2 percent bonus attack. Does Razorice crit? and I can't find anything on the proc rate of Cinderglacier either. If someone could point me in the right direction that would be great.

Also whether BP or UP would be a better benefit to our dps, and whether Unholy provides a better alternative than blood. From what I have seen, read, and tested BcB is absolutely horrible in both scaling and Necrosis isn't much better.

 

Bloody_sorcerer

FC is 2 procs per minute, and this procrate scales with all weapon speed-impacting hastes. Cinderglacier is 1 PPM, also impacted by weapon speed-impacting hastes. I tested these extensively a few weeks ago for the rawr DPSDK model.

To determine the value of CG versus RI, we should determine the average percent increase to all frost/shadow damage provided by Cinderglacier and compare it with razorice's. Here's some loose math on it:
The average frost rotation will pump out roughly twelve frost strikes, three icy touches, and, say, two howling blasts per minute, during which Cinderglacier will proc once, boosting two of these by 20%. For these 17 abilities, cinderglacier is providing a ~2.4% damage increase across all of them, whereas razorice would boost them all by 5%. I realize this math is pretty brief, but barring a large buff to CG (ie a change in its PPM), razorice will be superior to it virtually always for PvE interests. Additionally, the tooltip for razorice has long indicated that the frost vulnerability debuff is supposed to stack ten times, rather than five; perhaps this will either be fixed in this patch or the tooltip will be changed, although I don't expect it to.
As far as the damage proc from RI is concerned, it contributes a pretty worthless amounts of damage. on a 2H weapon on live, razorice often hits in the neighborhood of 16 damage.

 

Xentik

Perhaps I've misunderstood PPM mechanics , but I was under the impression that the proc % was calculated based on the speed (or unhasted speed depending on the proc) of the weapon, which can't take into account strikes and such. That means that extra strikes would increase the mean procs per minute of CG relative to RI (since RI procs don't do anything but refresh duration once the stack is up).

1ppm for a 2.5 spd weapon would give us a proc rate of 4.2%. If we assume the 12 FS you mentioned, plus at least another dozen or so strikes that benefit from ToT (Ob, BS) we would have an actual ppm of 2 (1 from white damage + 4.2% * 24 ~= 1 from strikes) By your calculations this would bring it up to about 5% buff, equalling what you got for RI.

If my understanding is correct, then we'll need more detailed calculations in order to really determine which is superior.

 

Bloody_sorcerer

Good point; weapon-using strikes are definitely capable of proccing cinderglacier, although I'm unaware of where they get their proc chance from (inheriting it from weapon speed sounds like a reasonable place to start). The deciding factor will likely be how this percentage is handled. Also, impacts on diseases will be worth determining. (does a cinderglaciered icy touch apply a 20% stronger frost fever? Does a frost fever on a razoriced target hit 5% harder? does anything happen to blood plague? what about necrosis?)

 

Parahelios

Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding what you meant to say, but Haste won't lower your weapon damage per swing - it really just makes you swing faster. For example, at 100% haste you will do 100% more attacks in the same amount of time. Or in other words, you attack twice as fast.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe so far it has been shown that UP is of greatest benefit when your rotation is tight or cannot fit all the GCD's required into it, otherwise BP is the stronger choice. Since there is still more testing to be done before optimal specs (and their rotations) are played with, its probably a little too early to say which presence will win.

 

Konata

I am pretty sure those ppm numbers are wrong. They upped the ppm for FC alot when they nerfed it. I may be wrong, but they seem to proc alot more than that. It could be due to the strikes and haste that I have.

Also RI is + 10% frost damage which effect IT, FS, HB, FF.

CG effects skills only so IT, FS, HB, DC.

Long single target fights RI is better.
AoE and short fights CG is better, also is better in high movement fights since it won't fall off like RI.

If you can I would carry 3 1handed weapons, 1 with FC, CG and RI. and use them accordingly. Since some boss fights do benefit from AoE damage.

 

dr_AllCOM3

RI is 5%. I'd use FC+FC, since it's useful in every situation. Maybe CG is good, but I haven't done any math about it.

Everything that doesn't explicitly exclude strikes in the tooltip can proc from strikes. Just as a base rule of thumb. Non-weapon procs seem to have a very small cooldown to prevent DW strikes to have a twice as high proc chance.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Sylari

CG looks to be completely noncompetitive again after the most recent build ( in all appearances ) pushed DC/ghoul subspecs out the door.