DW Frost DPS - Blowing Up the Competition One Obliterate At A Time

Publication par Eleazer

I will be the first to say that it is probably a bit early to give out a final authority on the matter. However with the recent mad rush of will this spec work posts. I decided to put the limited knowledge I have to work, and put together a guide spec sheet much like Lynri's 3.1 thread. I will do my best to keep this concise and updated as new information becomes available.

The 3.2 patch completely revamped frost dps and tanking more than any thing else imaginable. Our important stats changed, our gearing changed very marginally, the specs changed drastically, and our rotations also changed so in essence this was a major patch for every frost dps dk out there. Having said that much of the information remains the same from previous information, and we will cover it all.

Frost DW is not as heavily gear dependent as 2h was which brings a sigh of relief to every beginning Frost raider. However it is heavily dependent on some crucial stats and speccing correctly, an incorrect spec/glyph and missing a key stat can severely gimp your dps.

Common Abbreviations
AoE = Area of Effect
AMS = Anti-Magic Shell
BB = Blood Boil
BP = Blood Presence
IT = Icy Touch
DCh = Deathchill
DK = Death Knight
DnD = Death and Decay
DPS = Damage per Second
FC = Rune of the Fallen Crusader
FF = Frost Fever
FS = Frost Strike
GCD = Global Cooldown
HoW = Horn of Winter
KM = Killing Machine
OB = Obliterate
PS = Plague Strike
RP = Runic Power
UA = Unbreakable Armor
UP = Unholy Presence
BcB= Blood caked blade
ToT= Threat of Thassarian
DC = Death Coil

Stat Weighting

This information is still being updated, but for basic usage lets go down the stats in order of importance for Frost DW

Hit Rating - Until the epic 17 percent (440 hit) rating is reached in raid numbers it is the single most important stat to collect. This does not mean you should become a rogue and gem hit rating. In fact, Hit Rating suffers from Diminishing returns as you pass certain Landmark numbers.
8 percent is the first landmark number until you reach the 8 percent special hit cap Hit Rating is the most important stat you can have. All of our specials are operated off of our main hands hit rating and speccing into Threat of Thassarian gives you a 100 percent hit from your offhand on specials when your Main hand hits. Nerves of Cold Steel allows 5 percent hit to special hit cap you.
17 percent is the untalented, unbuffed hit cap for spells. Around 30-40 percent of our damage is done via spells so getting as close to the 440 cap as possible is advisable. Now in raids 12 percent is more than enough as grouped with shadow priests or moonkins will give you an extra 3 percent spell hit. REMEMBER SPELL HIT IS NOT THE SAME AS YOUR MELEE HIT. Once 8 percent is reached, Diminishing returns begins to take effect.. However, I would do everything I could to reach 11-13 percent in hit rating.

5% - Melee special hit cap with Nerves of Cold Steel
8% - Melee's Special hit cap.
10% - Alliance Spell hit cap if raiding with Draenei (in group) and Moonkin or Shadowpriest
11% - Horde spell hit cap if raiding with Moonkin or Shadowpriest (Misery or Fairie Fire)
14% - DK spell hit cap if specced into Virulence
17% - unbuffed and untalented Spell hit cap
24% - DW Mellee hit cap with Nerves of Cold Steel
27% - Melee DW white hit cap

Strength - Strength is still the best stat to gem for once you reach 8 percent hit. Strength gives you 2 AP for every 1 strength added. It exceeds flat ap as it is buffed by Kings. So any food/flask/enchant that would give you a certain amount of strength would give you double that amount of AP. (40 Strength = 80 AP) Every gem you can should be sent to strength or have strength factored into it until you reach 6500ap raid buffed.

Expertise - 26 soft capped untalented is the big number once you get there this stat becomes useless. All 3 talent trees have an expertise boost, so once you get to 19 expertise rating the stat hits a huge diminishing return number and is not really worth worrying about if specced into the appropriate talents.

Armour Penetration - Armour penetration is taking a huge leap up in importance we are pretty close to Blood dps now in the benefit of Armour penetration over most of the other stats. DW uses Obliterate as it's major source of damage, Melee will be around 22 percent of your damage as well, both of these attacks are greatly boosted by armour penetration. However Armour Penetration will never exceed Hit rating as an important stat. Once you reach 6.5k ap buffed however Armour Pen has the possibility of passing strength as the stat to gem for.

Haste - I know we are a cooldown based dps class. However DW receives a larger boost in dps than 2h does in haste. Once crit is past 27 percent raid buffed, haste becomes a more viable stat, as your dps per point of haste increase will increase. Also haste is one of the few stats that scales very well with weapons and more armor penetration, and does not suffer from Diminishing returns until you get to an obscene number. The downside is that haste only increases GCD marginally and does not increase rune cooldowns, so it basically only increases the amount of white hits as well as damage done by RI/Necrosis/Bcb (all three of those are such a small amount of damage), and does not effect the amount of specials you can use.

Crit - This stat takes the largest drop of any stat. Once a huge stat and wildly loved by Frost DK's, the nerf to FS, and the switch to DW causes a large drop in this stat's viability. Once you reach 27 percent in unbuffed crit, the diminshing returns become large enough where it's not even worth thinking about.

These are the few stats that changed due to the recent patch. This is not the final authority nor but simply a work in progress.

Presence

A constantly debated topic as both are viable in the new updated patch. Once again we are faced with UH surpassing Blood presence on short fights and in fights where you won't be runic power starved. However Blood Presence with Epidemic is alot easier to manage and in longer fights it outshines unholy by a large margin.

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Specs and Glyphs

There are two ways in the recent patch to spec and glyph. Personal DPS and Raid Buff DPS. Depending on your grouping and job in the raid. If there is a Frost Tank specced into IIT or a smart enhance shaman than it will free you up to do more dps and spec for personal dps. Your role also will help decide both your rotation and your glyphing. (Builds using a blood subspec have been shown to be inferior to the unholy subspec flavor. This is mostly due to bladed armor's poor scaling, and the already high crit rate on various abilities. Dark conviction is simply not that valuable to a frost build. This was taken directly from elitistjerks.com)

Glyphs

Glyph of Icy Touch - (Optional) If you are responsible for Imp Icy Talons buff than this glyph is the one for you. The bonus to rp is nice considering that if you don't manage your rotation correctly you will be RP starved without it. This is the glyph I use, as I am responsible for raid haste buff, I also used to find that I became RP starved at the end of my first rotation.

Glyph of Disease - (Optional) If you can manage the Icy Talons buff or if you aren't responsible for the Haste buff, this is one of the single best glyphs out there if you are having trouble managing your rotations - I love it as the loss of one BS is gained by a more efficient GCD usage for Rime or FS. It is a dps loss, due to Pestilence not creating and dps itself. However, it allows for a simpler rotation, and an extra GCD for Rime procs, this can cause a dps increase for those struggling with the rotation. With all things being perfect a non-GoD, DW Frost DK will put out more dps than with GoD. That's the math of the situation. It is not a huge amount of dps gained, but it is still dps gained.

Glyph of Frost Strike - Mandatory in All Builds

Glyph of Obliterate - Mandatory in All Builds

Raid Buff Specs

0/53/18 or 0/53/18 or 0/53/18 - As you can see there are various slight differentiations of the same spec depending on how much you value Chill of the Grave. This seems to be the best overall spec out there as it allows you to maintain IIT and still push out a maximum dps. There are some issues to this spec. First, it is extermely gear and weapon dependent, the better the gear and weapon the more it shines. However, there is the loss of Subversion and DeathChill, EJ's doesn't spec into UA simply because it doesn't simulate well. However they recommend going 4/5 in killing machine to get a point in UA. There is a large issue of Threat with this build. It requires constant maintenance and watching of threat

3/53/15 - This is the subversion spec until and is the least gear dependent out of all of the unholy subspecs. Until you gain a good weapon and a combined hit/haste of 450 to facilitate the use of BcB this spec would be a greater dps gain. Also the gain of subversion gives you a large increase in OB crits which is always nice until BcB can surpass it. The true benefit of this spec is the reduction in threat. BcB scales very well, with higher grade weapons and gear this spec loses value. The dps difference between BcB and Subversion subspec is approximately 25-30 dps or around 1 percent dps loss when raiding. It has been noted that putting one point in subversion and 2 in BcB is a larger loss in dps than any other move you can make. It's an all or nothing move Subversion or BcB.

15/55 + 1 - This is a build for newer 80's before you reach ilvl219 gear this build will give you the most dps. Unholy Tree in end-raiding scales much better with haste/hit/DW mechanics than blood does. Though Bladed armor is weak if your hit/haste are low, but your armour penetration is high than this build can end up a better dps alternative.

Weapon Runes

What runes to use is going to be under some debate for some time. With tests being run daily a large portion of rune choice is personal preference and speed of deaths and attacks. In heavy movement fights or short times down one rune will out shine the other. There are some options that are not up for debate, and we will cover those.

First off, let's be very clear here. Slow/Slow weapons is the only way to go. There is no debate here. Slow average weapon damage is what you need to find, by slow we mean 2.5 speed or slower. Average weapon damage is the first thing to look for so when looking at two weapons if one shows 286-486 and another shows 244-440. Than option one is better unless the available stats on the weapon are such a huge difference that it over shadows the weapon damage boost. Weapon DPS doesn't matter, and in all honesty stats on weapons don't matter. Whether a weapon has strength or not doesn't matter - Weapon damage does. The slower and higher the weapon damage the better the weapon is in maximizing your dps.

Rune of Fallen Crusader: Still the single best rune out there with an up time around 60 percent. This rune is an absolute must on MH. There is no discussion as to MH rune. It should always be FC. FC/FC benefit is an 80 percent up time of the buff. FC can not dual buff ever. It is a single buff that when procced refreshes the existing up time. FC/FC is better than any other DW rune system on any fight lasting shorter than 37 seconds or where you can not get back to your target in 15 seconds. In raid dps, FC/FC is very close to FC/RI in dps.

Rune of Razorice: One of the main reasons I love DW. Razorice is unique in that it provides two options one is a 2percent free damage hit and the second is a stacking debuff against frost damage. This debuff stacks to 10 giving you 10 percent additional damage on any frost magic (IT/FF/RI/HB/FS). It takes approximately 37 seconds for you to get full benefit of this Rune. In boss fights FC/RI surpasses any other rune combination. Finally RI's proc rates and damage is based on Main hand weapon and has nothing to do with your Offhand. The debuff though does work off your offhand.

NOTICE:

The following rune and glyph are used often, and I have listed the reasons below why they shouldn't be used.

Rune of Cinder Glacier: There has been some debate as to the validity of using CG, but nothing has come close to the above two. There are two many issues with it. CG has a low proc rate making it bad for the offhand. It also requires a large group to outshine the other two and only gives a benefit to your next two Frost attacks. On the plus side, Frost Fever does not proc the CG debuff. On the negative side, there is no way to guarantee that FS or HB will be the benefactor of the increase in damage, and the 20 percent bonus to your Frost damage is 10 percent more on two swings than RI. The only way to maximize CG usage is to do everything in your power to make sure HB or FS are the only guys eating the bonus debuff.

Glyph of Blood Strike - There is a push and i can see how it could come out as the top dps glyph, but I just can't see wasting a rune to get a snare on something just to bump up a rather weak attack. This glyph only comes out on top if you cast BS every time there is a snare making it rather weak. It has also been noted that this glyph no longer works on bosses.

Glyph of Howling Blast: This glyph is no longer an option. The amount of dps lost by taking an extra 3 seconds to apply the IT/PS/Pest, before using BB and HB is more than made up by the amount of dps gained by the application of diseases to all targets, and the added benefit of bonus BB damage. This glyph is only in use for 2h tanking single disease builds. There is two ways where this glyph is better - 1. You are not 80. 2. The adds you are facing will die in less or somewhere between 10-20 seconds. This is not a raid glyph.

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Rotations

Frost DW DPS is no longer a solid rotation dps. We are now a priority rotation because of the tightness of the rotation and dps usage There are several rotations that work, however both are priority rotations. A priority rotation means that if say KM procs and Rime procs HB becomes the number one thing to pop over anything else. By using a priority rotation over a higher rotation we get a bit more flexibility in our play however it also means that we can end up with some really bad dps situations if we allow our diseases to fall off. There are Three basic rotations. Glyph of Disease priority rotation without ImpIIT - You can spec into it and simply not be responsible for it, GoD with Imp IT rotation, and non GoD rotations

Priority Rotation
1. Frost Fever
2. Blood Plague
3. Rime/KM Proc
4. Obliterate
5. KM/Frost Strike
6. Blood Strike
7. FS without KM
8. Rime without KM

Concerning Rime/KM/FS - When Rime Procs you save it for a Killing Machine Proc. If Killing Machine Procs and there is no Rime you use it on FS immediately unless there is an Obliterate available or disease are falling off. Always refresh diseases as they are falling off, do not allow them to tick off before reapplying.

Basic Rotation
IT/PS/OB/BS/BS/FS - RP dump
OB/OB/OB/FS - RP Dump
Your initial rotation looks like this for all 3 builds after the initial application it becomes a Priority rotation.

GoD Rotation without Imp IIT
If you are not responsible for the haste buff your rotation would be something like this with the priority rotation still taking precedence.

IT/PS/OB/BS/BS/FS - RP dump
OB/OB/Pest/BS/FS - RP Dump
OB/OB/OB/FS - RP Dump
OB/Pest/BS/OB/FS - RP Dump

GoD with IIT responsibility

If you are responsible for the haste buff, you would have the following rotation while still following the priority rotation above.

IT/PS/OB/BS/BS/FS - RP Dump
OB/OB/pest/BS/FS - RP Dump
OB/IT/PS/OB/FS - RP Dump
OB/OB/OB/FS - RP Dump
Pest/BS/OB/FS - RP Dump

non-GoD rotation
If you are responsible for haste buff here is a rotation while still following the priority rotation.

IT/PS/OB/BS/BS/FS - RP Dump
OB/OB/OB/FS - RP Dump
IT/PS/OB/OB/OB/FS - RP Dump

The benefit of a priority rotation is that you none of these rotations are solid. I find myself FS weaving on KM procs as well as HB/RIME/KM procs. This makes for a constantly changing rotation.

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Enchants/Gemming/Food/Flasks

There are many options at each of these and I will list them in order from what I feel is best to worst with a brief explanation as to why I feel that way. Such as I am not a big fan of Fish Feast except it's usually free so that's nice, but I prefer specific Food over general Fish Feast made for lazy people. :P I am not going to list Elixirs as I feel outside of specific demands no dps should waste money on elixirs when Flasks are out there

Food and Flasks

Flasks

1. Flask of Endless Rage - The best dps flask out there for you. There really is no other option. It generally costs about 20 gold and can be found in endless amounts on AH
2. Flask of Relentless Assault - 2nd option the only time you should use this is if there is none of number 1 anywhere.

Food

1. Dragonfin Fillet - or something similar once you have a nice hit number going
2. Fish Feast - if you are too lazy to get number 1 someone will have number 2 ;p.

Gems

Gemming Strength is the way to go once you pass the 8-10 percent hit rating. If you are before that amount than gemming hit will give you a larger dps increase.

Meta

Relentless Earthsiege - The top option however gemming for it with Nightmare Tear makes it expensive. You must use the Nightmare tear to pull ahead of Chaotic Skyflare Meta.

Chaotic Skyflare - A nice option and is much cheaper to match the requirements the dps loss is ~1%.

Red

1. Bold Dragon's Eye - makes a man want to be a Jewelcrafter
2. Bold Cardinal Ruby - If you are hit-capped and are in T8 gear or beyond this is the gem to grab. I find that spending the amount of money on this gem before that is a waste.
3. Bold Stormjewel - Very nice but rare
4. Bold Scarlet Ruby - If you aren't raiding Ulduar 10/25 or the new 10 man this is the gem of choice.

Purple

Generally speaking you rarely will gem anything but red strength gems unless you need to match meta gem requirements.

1. Sovereign Dreadstone - Not worth the money unless you are high-end raiding.
2. Sovereign Twilight Opal - cheap and a good way to go to get the meta requirement.

Orange

I would recommend an Orange over a Yellow gem any day of the week.

1. Etched Ametrine
2. Etched Monarch Topaz
3. Fierce Ametrine
4. Accurate Ametrine
5. Fierce Monarch Topaz
6. Accurate Monarch Topaz

Yellow

1. Rigid Dragon's Eye - If you need to get to the hit cap this is the fastest way to get there.
2.Rigid King's Amber
3. Rigid Stormjewel
4. Rigid Autumn's Glow
5. Quick Dragon's Eye - I don't know the value of Haste, but I am tempted to gem once I get to 5k raid buffed ap and see how it works.
6. Quick King's Amber
7. Quick Autumn's Glow

Enchants

Head

1. Arcanum of Torment
2. Arcanum of Triumph
3. Arcanum of Ferocity

Shoulders

1. Greater Inscription of the Axe
2. Lesser Inscription of the Axe
3. Greater Inscription of Vengeance
4. Greater Inscription of the Blade
5. Inscription of Triumph
6. Inscription of Vengeance
7. Inscription of the Blade

Cloak

1. Haste
2. Subtlety - perhaps an answer to 53/18 threat issues
3. Major Agility
4. Superior Agility

Chest

1. Powerful Stats
2. Superior Stats

Bracer

1. Greater Assault
2. Striking
3. Expertise

Gloves

1. Precision
2. Crusher
3. Greater Assault
4. Expertise

Boots

1. Icewalker
2. Greater Assault
3. Assault
4. Surefooted
5. Tuskarr's Vitality