I'm just taking guesses here; I'm not a PVPer, in fact I'm bad at it skill-wise, but I understand game mechanics pretty well, so I'm looking at the data here. Frost 2H's primary burst damage is all physical, which is the thing nearly every class in the game is strongest against, and even clothies like Mages and Warlocks get Armor spells that increase their defense to it.
Because of that, if I were to make an entirely objective guess looking at the Data vs. Armor/PVP Defense stats and various class abilites such as stances, presences, Armor Spells and various other buffs, I imagine Frost DW will actually have an edge, since the majority of it's damage ignores the armor factor entirely, and has range to it.
But, this is talking pure damage numbers here. PVP gets more play out your ability to control the other team then it does your ability to nuke like crazy. Nuking is important for sure, but a class with say a 500k instant hit but nothing but a single 3 second stun isn't as powerful as a class with a spammable 150k hit and multiple roots and slows.
That 150k adds up way faster when they're not able to get away, as opposed to being able to hit them hard once, and then have to chase them. It's why I think if anything, we'll see nerfs to things like Death's Advance and the Icy Touch glyph giving frost the ability to chain dispels and cc in the same go.
Zombie Vampire Werewolf
2H is Haste Frost and DW To beat 2h in dps requires Masterfrost
And a target to cleave, otherwise the difference is marginal. Single target they're both within 780~ dps of one another, Masterfrost only takes off at all in a cleave situation, and even there it's only a few percent better then 2H Frost altering it's rotation to use HB.
Really, they're all very comparable with the latest data Euliat gave us. I'll be going 2H frost because damnit, I have some amazing 2h transmog weapons, and I intend to beat the happy hell out of the Mogu with them.
Zombie Vampire Werewolf
800DPS is almost 2%. Whether you feel 2% is marginal or not is completely up to you. If you really prefer the hastefrost playstyle, you should probably play 2H frost for a much smaller penalty.
---------- Post added 2012-08-27 at 06:31 PM ----------
"It doesn't matter what you use KM on" is equivalent to "you can ignore KM".
You were wrong. I make mistakes too, more frequently than I'd like, and when someone corrects me I politely thank them and move on.
Don't forget calling something '2% dps loss' sounds way worse then 'It's 800 dps over the course of a fight.' So people overreact.
Zombie Vampire Werewolf
There is a difference Ignoring Km is a loss because you miss potental KM procs by not using then immediately.
And from everything I have read DWs OB and FS hit for roughly the same amount of Damage using Haste>Mastery stat Priority.
Once you reach max level, WoW is a game of incremental improvements. People pay thousands of gold for epic gems and enchants, reforge all their gear with each upgrade using stat weights painstakingly generated to the 4th decimal point, spend weeks doing dailies for rep, etc, for less than a 1% performance gain. So I mean yeah, you can easily dismiss it as only 2%. But think about what you would do to improve your performance by 2% elsewhere, and what your performance would be if you ignored all that stuff.
@Kaos: Why would you hold off using Obliterate or Frost Strike? You want to spend your resources as quickly as possible so they can regenerate or not cap, respectively. As for "hitting for the same damage", they are pretty close-- the difference comes out to be an additional 1% total performance lost. But again, all those tiny incremental differences add up; DW hastefrost ignoring KM (or to phrase it differently, using KM on whatever ability is available) is a full 2.7% below DW masterfrost2.0.
Last edited by Schizoide; 2012-08-27 at 10:38 PM.
That's a fair point, but you have to consider the 'fun' aspect a bit.
I can understand learning to play a new spec if it's a MASSIVE dps increase, like going from PVE Frost Mage to Arcane or Fire in 4.3.4.; but I'll happily spend 10,000 gold on gear/gems for 2% dps, but I won't re-learn how to play a spec/style I hate for it. Needs to be a bigger boost then 800dps for me to do something that isn't fun.
Zombie Vampire Werewolf
That's a perfectly legit stance, but remember you can just get a 2H weapon and play 2H hastefrost with a much smaller performance loss.
Probably DW, with the extra mastery and the ability to spamroot dispels with the Icy Touch glyph, and bomb people with Frost Strikes using the resulting runic power.
Zombie Vampire Werewolf