Well erm, there are a few points to think about:
1: icy talons is more effective than Windfury totem, but unlike windfury it requires 9 points to be spend
2: the improved icy talons talent also gives YOU an alltime buff of 5% haste on top of whatever haste your gonna get raidbuffed
DPS point of view:
So? is 11% haste (6 difference from windfury and 5 from talent) worth 9 point...
To start off, 3 points are needed in frost dps/tank build anyway, the points in Improved icy touch.
That makes it 6 points for 11% haste... Take a look at the following builds:
WITH icy talons: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfcMcZGhxzIxdMhRVosxbG
Without icy talons: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfcMcZG0xthxdRhRVosxbG
The difference is avoidance at the cost of haste, for any frost death knight build to dps this goes.
What u get is 30 extra max Rune power and 9% more armor from items.
At the cost of 11% haste.. or 25% if there is no shaman
I can see a few occasions where this is gonna be better, but tbh with the ammount of haste you have while raiding, you should hardly ever NOT have time to RP dump before you hit 100 as frost dps, so the 30 rp is neglectable. the 9% armor makes a difference of a few % damage absorbtion, it CAN save you but not worth the points.
Tank point of view:
Tank build WITHOUT icy talons: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jbtMcZGxxzhed0hRVosx0g (you could swap the 3% crit for Acclimation in frost)
Tank build WITH icy talons: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jbxMZGxxthIdohRVosx0g
When taking, your taking the avoidance talents anyway, so you are looking at change on dps talents here, what you should note is that the cost of the icy talons talents i roughly:
1 AP for every 180 armor (which should be like 20k+ as DK in frost presence? so 100+ AP)
3% crit
20% chance on crit of melee swing to get your next frost move to crit
All that at the cost of 11% haste (yeye, 25 with shammy :P)
As you can see, on DPS specs its somewhat a shot at preference, while in tanking builds its either haste or pure damage output.
What is gonna give you more threat in the end is prolly no icy talons build, but i cant say this for sure since i respecced before tanking serious heroics.
EDIT:
Forget to answer your question directly:
Quote:
The points seem to be more valuable used elsewhere for DPS, tanking or OT.
Well, you cant place these points just wherever, your gonna be forced to put them in low tier frost, to bridge the lack of points you have to get to the higher tiers, so its not like you can significantly increase your damage per hit if you pass out on the haste
Edited, Dec 26th 2008 9:20pm by Chamassa