What's Frost feel like now?

[hellhamster]

Great post, kinda confirmed what a lot of people were expecting, Obliterate centered builds for single target will take off and Frostscythe will stay behind.

[Schizoide]

Schizoide what kind of single target ability priority would we be looking at with that?

Sounds like it would be similar to what we are seeing on the wowhead guide but without obliteration, and only using Glacial Advance on 2 or more targets.

Standard frost priority, no Obliteration, but Glacial Advance is worth using on 1 target. It's a ~2% DPS loss on single-targets versus Obliteration, but you should still press the button.

@hellhamster: Amazingly, Frostscythe loses in AE too!

[XScorpion2]

Not really, not in sustained DPS. And FPulse smokes it on cleave/AE. It really is a very strong talent. Every frost DK should take it in all PvE circumstances.

Frost T19P 1 target HoW (default profile): 258.4k
Frost T19P 1 target FPulse: 257.4k (-0.4%)

Frost T19P 3 targets HoW (default profile): 351.5k
Frost T19P 3 targets FPulse: 405.4k (+15.3%)

It's a shame, because FPulse is completely passive and HoW adds a button. It's simply undertuned. HoW should be buffed, perhaps by reducing the cooldown to 20s. Passive talents that don't change gameplay should always underperform active ones.

Of course if you need timed single-target burst HoW could pull ahead, but it has a 30s cooldown so you won't see much benefit delaying it either.

Update
While messing around with the latest Simcraft, I found quite a few "trap" talents. Frostscythe in particular is a shame, as I love using it and it's an active button versus the passive optimal talent, Runic Attenuation. But Frostscythe sims as hot stinking garbage.

T1 Murderous Efficiency: Balanced fine standalone, but Icy Talons has strong synergy with Frozen Pulse and Avalanche.

T2 Freezing Fog: 5% single-target DPS loss
T2 HoW: 15% AE DPS loss

T3 Icecap: Only a 1% loss single-target, but 4.4% AE/cleave loss
T3 Hungering Rune Weapon: Balanced single-target; but 5.2% AE/cleave loss

T6 Frostscythe: 8.2% single-target loss and 7.8% AE/cleave loss (Yes, the active AE talent sucks in AE. I simmed this several times to be sure.)
T6 Gathering Storm: 7.4% single-target loss, and 1.8% AE/cleave loss (An AE-specific talent sucks in AE. Seems legit.)

T7 Breath of Sindragosa: 9.4% single-target loss, and 3.1% AE/cleave loss. (Seeing a pattern here? All Frost DK AE talents suck in AE!)
T7 Glacial Advance: 2.2% single-target loss, and 6.0% AE/cleave gain. (Finally, an AE talent that's worth using in AE!)

Overall, unless you're switching talents every fight and are faced with an exclusively single-target encounter, the only truly valid talent choices are

http://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/d...ght/frost/c6gc

If you prefer managing additional buttons from Horn of Winter and Frostscythe, or the cool gameplay elements from Shattering Strikes, Gathering Storm, Obliteration, or Breath of Sindragosa... too bad. Even though those talents are much more work to use properly, they underperform passive talents.

The only reason I can imagine that people aren't outraged over this stuff is because Frost has performed so poorly this expansion that nobody really bothered looking into it. If the number buffs make Frost competitive, that should change.

Great summary Schizoid! IT's felt like Blizzard has be reducing Frost damage (in alpha/beta) mainly for one of 2 reasons: either the burst was too high or the aoe was too high, but in doing so they end up hurting the spec too much. Personal opinions of course, but I'd like to see them add more mechanics to base spells similar to our gold talent "Frozen Soul".

Edit: Granted just doing that won't fix all our problems, but ya...

So the sims look great to me, 250dps - 300dps for all of the specs looks like a great balance to me.

Edit 2: That's not great balance, that's really terrible actually. That's a 17%+ spread, and for the current M+ and Raid environment where a smaller dps increase such as flasks, food, and potions are by most considered "must have", a 17% dps loss due to your spec being "inferior" just because is absolutely unacceptable.

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

[Clash the DK]

Amazingly, Frostscythe loses in AE too!

What stat priority are you using to get these results? Frostscythe machine gun obviously favors Crit>Mastery>Haste.
But I haven't done any testing lately with the "traditional" rotation. Last I heard, it favors Haste much more.

Right now, I'm running with approx 33% Crit / 35% Mastery and I've noticed Frostscythe's crit rate pushing up to 70%.
I just can't see how the traditional rotation could ever possibly out damage that in AoE.

[XScorpion2]

What stat priority are you using to get these results? Frostscythe machine gun obviously favors Crit>Mastery>Haste.
But I haven't done any testing lately with the "traditional" rotation. Last I heard, it favors Haste much more.

Right now, I'm running with approx 33% Crit / 35% Mastery and I've noticed Frostscythe's crit rate pushing up to 70%.
I just can't see how the traditional rotation could ever possibly out damage that in AoE.

I think he is talking about after the upcoming hotfixes. This change is most likely due to blizzard buffing Oblit 19% while only buffing FSc by 13%

[Schizoide]

This is using the stock simcraft T19-pre gear, average itemlvl 844, with Simcraft dated today (september 26). Stats are 28% crit, 17% haste, 23% mastery.

I don't have a T19N or T19H profile or I would use that instead, as they are more relevant now.

Edit: Just checked again, no DK raid profiles yet.

https://github.com/simulationcraft/s...n-dev/profiles

Update
I added fake enchants for +1200 crit, +2400 haste, and +2400 mastery to the T19P profile, bringing them to

31.7% crit
33.7% mastery
24.6% haste

T19P 1target buffed secondary stats, default talents/APL: 294.4k DPS
T19P 1target buffed secondarystats, MG talents, default APL: 289.3k DPS (-1.7%)
T19P 1target buffed secondary stats, MG talents/APL: 288.8k DPS (-1.9%)

Still can't get MG as written on Icy-Veins.com to beat standard frost on 1 target, but it does come pretty close. Note Frostscythe had a critrate of 51.8%.

T19P 3targets buffed secondary stats, default talents/APL: 403.3k DPS
T19P 3targets buffed secondary stats, MG talents, default APL: 482.6k DPS (+19.7%)
T19P 3targets buffed secondary stats, MG talents/APL: 476.3k (+18.1%)

On AE/cleave the MG talents, being suited for AE, smoke the default profile. But switching to the MG actionlist is again a DPS loss.

And then, looking at Frostscythe in isolation. Do much higher secondary stats make Frostscythe better?

T19P 3targets buffed secondary stats, default talents/APL: 403.3k DPS
T19P 3targets buffed secondary stats, frostscythe, default APL: 371.4k DPS (-8.6%)

Nope.

Note the default APL only uses Frostscythe when KM is up or on 4 or more targets, so that round is not using Frostscythe without KM. What about 5 targets, using it every time?

T19P 5targets buffed secondary stats, default talents/APL: 509.4k DPS
T19P 5targets buffed secondary stats, frostscythe, default APL: 418.9k DPS (-21.6%)

Golly. No.

[tamo]

T6 Frostscythe: 8.2% single-target loss and 7.8% AE/cleave loss (Yes, the active AE talent sucks in AE. I simmed this several times to be sure.)
T6 Gathering Storm: 7.4% single-target loss, and 1.8% AE/cleave loss (An AE-specific talent sucks in AE. Seems legit.)

Every simresult is plausible, expect this.... how does a single target rotation outperform a 3 target rotation with frostscythe...i mean the talent is doing like ~220k aoe hits on average and single target only uses howling blast on procc? or did you use an other rotation?

[Clash the DK]

And then, looking at Frostscythe in isolation. Do much higher secondary stats make Frostscythe better? Nope.

But that doesn't make sense. Frostscythe gains 2x value of Crit compared to everything else in our toolkit.

[Schizoide]

It's not a single-target rotation, it's the default simcraft priority for Frost DK. It plays differently in AE/cleave.

Simply, Runic Attenuation generates a ton of Runic Power. You spend that Runic Power on Frost Strike, which is a single-target ability, but through Runic Empowerment every Frost Strike has a 25% chance to instantly refresh a rune. You then spend that rune on Glacial Advance, or Remorseless Winter, or whatever. It's core to DK gameplay-- increasing rune regen or runic power generation lets do you more stuff over time and is a very powerful feedback loop.

@Clash the DK:
Here's the best-case scenario for Frostscythe crit scaling. 5 targets, so it's used every time. Only crit is buffed from the T19P profile.

Frostscythe Best Crit Case Scenario - 5 targets
T19P 5targets +1200crit, default talents/APL: 454.9k DPS
T19P 5targets +1200crit, frostscythe, default APL: 371.9k DPS (-22.3%)

This pretty clearly destroys the concept of using Frostscythe without KM up. So lets try 3 targets, which does just that. This is how Frostscythe was originally designed to be used.

Frostscythe Best Crit Case Scenario - 3 targets
T19P 5targets +1200crit, default talents/APL: 362.7k DPS
T19P 5targets +1200crit, frostscythe, default APL: 335.1k DPS (-8.2%)

So either Simcraft is broken/wrong (which is entirely possible, as the alternative means all the world top DKs are wrong) or Frostscythe should not be used. I couldn't make it worth using even with +2400 mastery.

- - - Updated - - -

Here's a whopping +4000 crit. Got a 39.7% crit chance. Frostscythe crit 57.8% of the time. Still loses.

T19P 5targets +4000crit, default talents/APL: 487.9k DPS
T19P 5targets +4000crit, frostscythe, default APL: 403.1k DPS (-21%)

@Tehr: It's very possible that the frost DK 7.0 module is simply garbage. I didn't make a call on that, although I also disagree with their talent choices.

Regarding Glacial Advance vs. Obliteration specifically, Simcraft profiles are very tightly tuned for single-target DPS and Obliteration sims slightly higher. That one I understand why they did it, although I obviously would never spec Obliteration except on an exclusively single-target progression fight.

(I guess Tehr deleted his post?)

[hellhamster]

Can you link the simcraft profile, specifically the prio list for 3 or 5 targets? There is no way Frostscythe is 20% lower than anything else on that talent tier on aoe.

[Clash the DK]

So I just took a few minutes to hit on the dummies in our class hall.

3 Targets with the Frostscythe rotation (proper stat allocation / talents) with the exception of not using GA because it bugs out (so no T100 talent).
I was averaging a little more than 400k.

The traditional rotation with Runic Attenuation or with FSc being only used w/KM equaled at least a 100k loss in dps.

These results are exactly what I expected. So I have to assume that the Sim is broken.

[Schizoide]

@hellhamster: It's the default T19P profile, with the frostscythe talent selected. I did built my own MG profile and posted it earlier in the thread, but that's not what we're talking about recently.

@Clash the DK: That is totally possible. I double-checked and it is benefiting from KM and critting both with KM and independently for 5x damage in the sim so... I dunno.

[Tehr]

@Schizoide
I deleted my post because I haven't done the math on it yet, and I didn't want to make a hardline stance until I had evidence to back myself up.

For others, TLDR of my post was that four of the talents that are selected in Simcraft for the default sim are not used by top Frost DKs. I would still contend that even if Obliteration is slightly better for ST, it will fall behind because of the potential for lost uptime on Frozen Pulse, PLUS Obliterate still does not scale with Mastery. I can see a case being made for Runic Attenuation over Frost Scythe on Nyth and Ursoc, but I think that due to Crit being much more useful with Frost Scythe as your primary rune spender over Obliterate, I think that the itemization changes that are involved with the "traditional" rotation are too ridiculous to really reconcile (namely the devaluation of Mastery and Crit, which are the top two stats you're stacking with Frost Scythe.

If you wanted input on getting ideal results, I would sim a Frost DK with ~8k Crit, ~5k Mastery, ~2.5k Haste, and ~2.5k Versatility, which are values attainable at 840 ilvl (Secondary Stats at 840 ilvl are around 17500 total iirc).

[Schizoide]

The T19P profile is average itemlvl 844-- I posted the secondary stat values earlier in the thread. It honestly looks like something is up with the way it models frostscythe, but I haven't been able to pinpoint where it goes wrong.

[Hctaz]

The T19P profile is average itemlvl 844-- I posted the secondary stat values earlier in the thread. It honestly looks like something is up with the way it models frostscythe, but I haven't been able to pinpoint where it goes wrong.

Well... it would be important to figure out xD You got this broskii,

[tamo]

maybe you should pastebin your *.simc settings, because i don't get your results either.

[Adlian]

Will be closer to Unholy but still in the bottom, not excited at all.

[Schizoide]

Like I said, everything is the default T19P profile except where specifically noted. For frostscythe, I literally changed a 2 to a 1 in the talents line.

[Piz813]

Well none of us have T19...
How about play the game and see how frost does in person instead of analyzing computer calculation

[Hctaz]

Well none of us have T19...
How about play the game and see how frost does in person instead of analyzing computer calculation

The default T19 profile is ilvl 844 gear. 870 weapon and 840 BiS from dungeons. It isn't the tier set.