I've always been a fan of 2h, I liked blood back in Naxx/Ulduar, and I've stayed mostly unholy since then. Now at the same time the brief period I was DW Frost was amazingly fun. It absolutely killed my dps, but it was fun.
I'm about to get shadowmourne so I no longer have the option to have a DW Spec. However, the new cata trees really peak my interest because it looks like they are making a frost 2h spec. I would love to be able to play something other than unholy.
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2h frost does sound interesting with that "random rune refresh" thing going on. Between that and Rime procs it seems like it'll be more dynamic than unholy is/would be.
If you have a Shadowmourne, you can go with 2-handed Frost. It seems it breaks even or beats DW unless you have 2 Havoc's Calls. But that would be harder to achieve than getting SM, lol.
But yeah, Unholy with SM will probably always win. So if you are going for absolute top DpS, you're stuck with it. :P
That said, if you are going to go with DW, you can just as easily go 2H Frost. The DpS drop from one to the other is fairly small, and 2H can be superior depending on your weapons and stats. If you lose 200-300 DpS, who cares? You've already picked the tree with lower yields.
The biggest problem with 2H Frost is that you lose the CG buff, actually. But high ArP/haste builds can sidestep that by making their Oblits and white hits + BCB + Necrosis count for more of their damage.
Grats on getting SM though. I'll never have it, but want one so much.
But yeah, Unholy with SM will probably always win. So if you are going for absolute top DpS, you're stuck with it. :P
That said, if you are going to go with DW, you can just as easily go 2H Frost. The DpS drop from one to the other is fairly small, and 2H can be superior depending on your weapons and stats. If you lose 200-300 DpS, who cares? You've already picked the tree with lower yields.
The biggest problem with 2H Frost is that you lose the CG buff, actually. But high ArP/haste builds can sidestep that by making their Oblits and white hits + BCB + Necrosis count for more of their damage.
Grats on getting SM though. I'll never have it, but want one so much.
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
Is it common for DW Frost to roll with Cinderglacier and not Razorice? I thought the setup was Fallen Crusader + Razorice. Unless the AOE in ICC makes Cinderglacier worth it?
Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.
Crap, no, I just mixed them up, lol. I was thinking of RI but wrote CG.
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
In the shower today, where I do most of my "serious thinking", I just thought of a potential problem with 2h frost. Now granted, I never was serious about 2h frost during beta (the only time I'd ever tried it, while leveling), but it just dawned on me.
DW frost gets to use the rune to increase frost damage, while 2h would pretty much stick with the +str rune. Wouldn't that mean that everything a frost DK would do would be potentially 10% less damage across the board?
DW frost gets to use the rune to increase frost damage, while 2h would pretty much stick with the +str rune. Wouldn't that mean that everything a frost DK would do would be potentially 10% less damage across the board?
I kinda already brought that up, lol. But no, it's not nearly that bad. Frost Strike and Frost Fever are what make up the majority of your frost damage. You actually use fewer free HBs than you'd think.
Obliterate and Auto-attack are actually very large portions of your damage and, eventually, they alone make up more than 50% of it as Frost Strike is unaffected by ArP.
So, while RI is a problem for 2-hand, it's not necessarily an insurmountable one.
Taken from an EJ parse:
Melee= 17.3+10.9%
Oblit= 15.9+9.9%
FS= 14.8+9.2%
Necrosis= 3.4+2.1%
Blood Plague= 2.7%
Frost Fever= 2.4% (I would have though FF was the stronger diseases for Frost)
HB= 2.4%
BCB= 2.2+1.2%
So, even WITH the 10% buff, your frost damage is under 30% of your total damage done. So, even though it REALLY sucks to lose that buff, getting an extra 200 strength from your weapon, as opposed to AP, that will be increased by buffs/FC helps cancel it out some.
With a 2-handed build, this ends up even more skewed towards melee because you have higher auto-attack+necrosis+bcb damage.
[EDIT] Higher AA damage due to a much higher hit rate, which works out really well with Haste and ArP.
I think that's why the 2-handed talent gives you a random rune refresh. In theory, that will give you more strikes, which will help even things out.
Edited, Jul 19th 2010 12:59am by idiggory
Obliterate and Auto-attack are actually very large portions of your damage and, eventually, they alone make up more than 50% of it as Frost Strike is unaffected by ArP.
So, while RI is a problem for 2-hand, it's not necessarily an insurmountable one.
Taken from an EJ parse:
Melee= 17.3+10.9%
Oblit= 15.9+9.9%
FS= 14.8+9.2%
Necrosis= 3.4+2.1%
Blood Plague= 2.7%
Frost Fever= 2.4% (I would have though FF was the stronger diseases for Frost)
HB= 2.4%
BCB= 2.2+1.2%
So, even WITH the 10% buff, your frost damage is under 30% of your total damage done. So, even though it REALLY sucks to lose that buff, getting an extra 200 strength from your weapon, as opposed to AP, that will be increased by buffs/FC helps cancel it out some.
With a 2-handed build, this ends up even more skewed towards melee because you have higher auto-attack+necrosis+bcb damage.
[EDIT] Higher AA damage due to a much higher hit rate, which works out really well with Haste and ArP.
I think that's why the 2-handed talent gives you a random rune refresh. In theory, that will give you more strikes, which will help even things out.
Edited, Jul 19th 2010 12:59am by idiggory
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
Yeah, I see your point, but to be frank I'm never trusting EJ again. They prove an interesting information source, about as valuable to me as talking to some guy about it in trade chat. I wish I had cata beta to where I could spend time testing it out.
I'll go unholy if I MUST, but I dunno just the whole idea of a 2h legit frost build was fun. It felt like it took more concentration and effort to play frost than it does just repeating a rotation in unholy.
I'll go unholy if I MUST, but I dunno just the whole idea of a 2h legit frost build was fun. It felt like it took more concentration and effort to play frost than it does just repeating a rotation in unholy.
so you liked blood and about to get smourne? why not go for ArP blood?
Probably because Blood with a SM does less DpS than Frost with a SM which does less than Unholy with a SM.
I'm pretty sure Dil's the type where he goes with the maximum DpS/utility spec. And Blood offers low utility and dps compared to the other two.
Unholy is the best Utility and *usually* the best DpS (with equal ilvl weapons, Frost can be competitve and even better on some fights). I think there's one encounter where Blood does best in ICC, because there's like always a second target in range for HS to hit. But I don't know what it is.
I'm pretty sure Dil's the type where he goes with the maximum DpS/utility spec. And Blood offers low utility and dps compared to the other two.
Unholy is the best Utility and *usually* the best DpS (with equal ilvl weapons, Frost can be competitve and even better on some fights). I think there's one encounter where Blood does best in ICC, because there's like always a second target in range for HS to hit. But I don't know what it is.
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
There's kind of a lot of fights that can make ample use of cleaves to take down adds if you perform the strategy in such a way as to accommodate it; Marrowgar, PP, Blood Prince Council, Valithria, Sindragosa, LK all have you switching targets at some point, and doing it with secondary targets in close proximity to the boss himself.
Top DpS on those fights (according to WoL rankings) are:
Marrowgar- Unholy (Blood is third)
PP- Unholy (Blood is WAY behind and Frost is slightly better)
Blood Prince Council- Unholy (Frost is 1K less and Blood is 2k)
Valithria- Unholy, which is 2k higher than the other 2. But Blood is acutally 200 DpS higher than Frost).
Sindragosa- Unholy, with Frost about 800 behind and Blood over 2k behind)
LK- Unholy is best by 2k, but Frost only SLIGHTLY beats Blood.
I'm guessing, now that SM is becoming more and more common on people with even better gear, the multiplicative power of Unholy with strikes is just way too good at this point for Blood or Frost to realistically compete.
If you have one, you are making a significant DpS sacrifice to go with anything else.
Marrowgar- Unholy (Blood is third)
PP- Unholy (Blood is WAY behind and Frost is slightly better)
Blood Prince Council- Unholy (Frost is 1K less and Blood is 2k)
Valithria- Unholy, which is 2k higher than the other 2. But Blood is acutally 200 DpS higher than Frost).
Sindragosa- Unholy, with Frost about 800 behind and Blood over 2k behind)
LK- Unholy is best by 2k, but Frost only SLIGHTLY beats Blood.
I'm guessing, now that SM is becoming more and more common on people with even better gear, the multiplicative power of Unholy with strikes is just way too good at this point for Blood or Frost to realistically compete.
If you have one, you are making a significant DpS sacrifice to go with anything else.
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
I didn't say it was going to win because of them, I was just mentioning that there are a lot more places that you can cleave than you'd think 
I know there is at least one encounter that Blood HAD performed best on for a while, but maybe it wasn't because of the cleave? I'm too lazy to look up the rest right now, lol.
It does suck how far behind it is, though. I suppose it being the top tank spec makes up for it. Better than Frost for Mages, lol.
Meh, I was never a Blood fan anyway. The only talent they had I really liked was Sudden Doom. Nothing else was really that interesting about the spec to me. I suppose the main strike being a cleave was somewhat cool...?
It does suck how far behind it is, though. I suppose it being the top tank spec makes up for it. Better than Frost for Mages, lol.
Meh, I was never a Blood fan anyway. The only talent they had I really liked was Sudden Doom. Nothing else was really that interesting about the spec to me. I suppose the main strike being a cleave was somewhat cool...?
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
Yeah as these guys say, I pretty much have to go the best spec. I give up what I consider the more fun stuff for the good of the guild. It's also the guild environment I'm in. Sure we have hunters that love BM, but they have to go MM for raids. I'd catch such hell if I had SM and didn't have a really good dps spec, which is why I'm crossing my fingers that I won't be required to be unholy in cata.
Dilbrt wrote:
I'd catch such hell if I had SM and didn't have a really good dps spec
You'd blend into the majority of WoW players out there, no worries.
I've run heroics with a Fury Warrior who had Shadowmourne and Shadow's Edge and a messed up spec. Apparently the gear:skill scale goes down the drain completely at some point.
Like when I ran heroic Pit of Saron on my Druid (who had 60k health due to Blood Pact, Kings and Fortitude being available) and I died because my 5.8k GS healer ignored the "will damage you until fully healed" debuff. And then I had to solo Ick because everyone else died on the first Poison Nova or w/e it's called.
Though, if your guild is srs-pro, you might have an issue convincing them that 2h Frost is better than anything else once you get Shadowmourne. You could always try, just tell them that once you regem strength and get 5/5 Black Ice, 2h Frost beats 2h Unholy. If that doesn't work, just tell them that you bringing a 20% haste buff will allow Enhancement Shammies to respec for even more DPS, so that alone is a DPS upgrade.
Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.
Saw some changes on the talent calculator. Looks like Might of the Frozen Wastes got buffed to 45% chance to give 100 runic power.
With the current build, I'm thinking this:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=xsM0xOTp.9sm.deathknight
With the current build, I'm thinking this:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=xsM0xOTp.9sm.deathknight
Dilbrt wrote:
Saw some changes on the talent calculator. Looks like Might of the Frozen Wastes got buffed to 45% chance to give 100 runic power.
With the current build, I'm thinking this:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=xsM0xOTp.9sm.deathknight
With the current build, I'm thinking this:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=xsM0xOTp.9sm.deathknight
I like the idea of 2H frost. I would use the same build if it was competitive DPS wise with DW or Unholy as my current DK on my main server has no desire to tank and I have a rogue to DW.
The spell lists say FS is weapon dmg based, is this true? As if so 2H frost will be all about FS as the talent provides an insane amount of RP. It could push the spec towards being GCD capped as runes need to be used and RP must be burned before it caps or is wasted DPS.
Also are they making Str 1H weapons as warriors have a 1H build now so there should be weapons to support both. Honestly having Str 1Hers makes me wonder about 2H frost especially as it seems very FS spammy with the 2H talent.
As DW frost will use 1H Str weapons which will up scaling and being RP capped often with the new 2H talent can't be good. As RP capping is always bad.
As a random side note, what if any changes have been made to DK weapon chants? It could matter a lot and make or break 2H frost viability.
So beta folks answer those questions please.
side note: They added a FB attack will they add a UB attack as well? It could really help with 2H frost needing to spend a decent amount of GCD on FS yet still help it not let runes stay unused for extended periods.
Hellbanned
idiggory wrote:
Drinking at home. But I could probably stand to get laid.
Yes. It is 121% weapon damage + 333 as Frost damage at level 80.
Right now, the order of damaging abilities for me is:
Obliterate, as an overwhelming 1st.
Festering Strike.
Blood Strike, which is (88% + 673)*1.25.
Frost Strike (it could pass BS if I had a very powerful weapon, or KM proc I suppose)
Howling Blast.
Icy Touch.
Plague Strike (it would beat IT if my weapon was stronger).
As a result, your priority system is really, really confusing. And Frost DKs are basically going to NEED a new UI to show them EXACTLY what runes they have.
But I'm not sure the actual priority listing is that direct. Because it might potentially be better DpS to hold onto your Unholy/Frost runes (assuming you don't need to refresh diseases) in hope of turning a DR into a FS/Oblit or getting a procced rune that lets you use them. Because they're both WAY more damage than HB/IT. This may even hold true for open GCDs.
One exception--a KM HB might be enough damage guaranteed to go ahead and use the Frost Rune.
I'm not sure how the priority list will work out, but it'll be more intricate than the one in Wrath.
Right now, the order of damaging abilities for me is:
Obliterate, as an overwhelming 1st.
Festering Strike.
Blood Strike, which is (88% + 673)*1.25.
Frost Strike (it could pass BS if I had a very powerful weapon, or KM proc I suppose)
Howling Blast.
Icy Touch.
Plague Strike (it would beat IT if my weapon was stronger).
As a result, your priority system is really, really confusing. And Frost DKs are basically going to NEED a new UI to show them EXACTLY what runes they have.
But I'm not sure the actual priority listing is that direct. Because it might potentially be better DpS to hold onto your Unholy/Frost runes (assuming you don't need to refresh diseases) in hope of turning a DR into a FS/Oblit or getting a procced rune that lets you use them. Because they're both WAY more damage than HB/IT. This may even hold true for open GCDs.
One exception--a KM HB might be enough damage guaranteed to go ahead and use the Frost Rune.
I'm not sure how the priority list will work out, but it'll be more intricate than the one in Wrath.
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
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