Unbreakable Armor versus Toughness for dps frostFollow

OK I'm going to re-post a conversation I had on MMO because I so rarely do math, I figured someone might benefit from reading this.

Toughness + Bladed Armor do synergy, but not very well. If you assume 15k armor from items, then Bladed Armor would give ~417 AP (actually slightly more if that's just armor from items, but we'll go with that). That's not a bad increase in AP for 5 talent points, especially because it will likely scale with gear. Adding toughness throws your armor up to 17.25k armor from items, or an extra 2.25k armor - totalling in an extra 62.5 AP. So yes, it is a DPS boost, but not as much (since both are 5 point talents, compare 417 AP to 63 AP, and obviously toughness is inferior as a pure DPS talent).
That being said, if you sacrifice 1 point in toughness to get UA, that means that you will lose approx 12 AP in order to gain that cooldown. I'd say that is worth it.

Also, 14 AP does NOT equal 1 DPS. It equals 1 DPS to your auto-attack, before haste/hit/crit/dodge/parry is factored in. It adds various other amounts to your DPS via abilities as well. It is likely more than 1 DPS (probably about 4 AP - 1 DPS if you figure how little of our damage is auto-attack, but that's just a guesstimate), so obviously it is MORE in your favor that AP is good.

EDIT: DRM wouldn't necessarily be the greatest choice for a frost DK, since only frost or unholy runes can turn into death runes when it is used, not blood runes that were turned into death runes via blood of the north. And I don't see a need to use blood strike over obliterate.

Edited, Nov 6th 2008 12:20am by skribs