Frost vs Unholy 7.2.5

[Acidbaron]

Unholy's weakness on target swaps is nothing near what it used to be before Legion, as well as when you run Clawing Shadows it's easy to swap back and forth. Not nearly as bad as people have been saying.

Clawing shadows help clearing out a few before they expire but there's still an issue but you can work around if you know when you have to swap to waste as little runes as possible.

[Kaver]

I agree with a lot of the guys in here. The fact that Frost DK's needs to be in range of the boss for long fixed periods is a problem. You see so many Frost DK's ignoring game mechanics (myself include sometimes as i am no saint xD) because they dont want to lose out on the dps meter. I can't remember when i last saw a Frost DK soaking on Krosus :P

The sad reality is: BoS = Tunnel vision = not fun unless you think the dps meter is the game.

[Nangz]

Moving and doing mechanics is not a problem. BoS is a dps cooldown just like any other spec has. We have low mobility so your raids should already be looking to keep you in place as much as possible. Plenty of other specs have reasonably long duration cds that get clipped when they have to do mechanics.

Claims that Breath can't be done properly because of mechanics always fall on their face. Krosus and Trilliax are especially weak arguments. Krosus has plenty of soakable spots in melee range and Trilliax has plenty of soakable toxic cakes in melee. (Hint: If you are running far for either of these then your raid is doing it wrong anyway!)

[Tojara]

You also don't need to pop BoS exactly on CD. Ring also gives some flexibility in regards to having a really long burst period, and you game that around fight mechanics allowing you to do it. As long as you aren't losing a use of BoS, not doing it for 30 seconds or so because it lines up better with a lull in the encounter is what you should be doing anyway.

Krosus is a really poor example for multiple reasons. Unless your guild exclusively runs ret paladins and frost DKs, there is little reason to actively have those classes take soaking spots incredibly far away from the boss. You play to classes strengths. Having a DH dash to the ones where range are, and then dash back in after it's not is taking advantage of class strengths. Having a DK do the same, only to lose several seconds of DPS time on transit back to the boss is poor management. Lastly Krosus timing allows you to burn the boss for like 50 seconds before even having to soak, which is plenty of time to get your burst. Unless you're trying to cheese parses by never soaking the front third adds on Krosus (which a billion guilds do now), it was fairly common during actual progression for several people to soak the 'melee' section during Krosus anyway.

Trilliax cake is a joke. Either take close cakes that spawn near the boss, or have your non-retarded tank keep moving him ever so slowly around the outside of the room so melee don't have to pick up cakes 200 yards away from the boss.

I don't really understand the myth that Frost DKs need to ignore mechanics anymore than some of the other melee classes. Assassination rogues literally can't target swap during their 20 second burst period, and their target swapping is absolute shit. Retribution has terrible mobility much like us, and if they have to run away to do 'mechanics' during their 35-40 second burst period where they want to 'tunnel' they would be just as crippled as we would. I mean the whole game is built around strengths and weaknesses. Will there be encounters that Frost might not be amazing on in ToS? Probably. Is that terrible? No. It would be terrible balance if every single encounter preferred Frost over Unholy, and it would also be terrible balance if either one of them were just downright awful on them.

Considering how popular Frost DKs were in NH I'm fairly certain they aren't going to be dumpster tier in ToS. If half of the Frost DKs end up going Unholy because it's suddenly viable.. well, that's good because Unholy was virtually non-existent in NH.

[Nemesquish]

Moving and doing mechanics is not a problem. BoS is a dps cooldown just like any other spec has. We have low mobility so your raids should already be looking to keep you in place as much as possible. Plenty of other specs have reasonably long duration cds that get clipped when they have to do mechanics.

Claims that Breath can't be done properly because of mechanics always fall on their face. Krosus and Trilliax are especially weak arguments. Krosus has plenty of soakable spots in melee range and Trilliax has plenty of soakable toxic cakes in melee. (Hint: If you are running far for either of these then your raid is doing it wrong anyway!)

Really just depends on the guild tbh, I'm not lying when I say our guild wipes more to Mythic Krosus than we do to Mythic Guldan, cause, like most guilds, we're melee heavy and only 1 or 2 of the range we have soak correctly, So our strat is to have melee take middle and range to get back. I honestly feel terrible not being able to go middle for the most part, due to breath timings on this fight.

[Deleted]

My shit parses as frost, on fights like Krosus, is more down to mistakes and not taking advantage of SoN based on fight length and transition periods. Also at this stage of NH progression, parsing well and killing a boss are 2 different things. Very early parses where fight mechanics were crucial were a 'better' indication of what you needed to do to be considered a top player. Nowadays, given the titanforge system and how patches, nerfs and traits come into play it's MORE about RNG and ignoring mechanics than actual skill on content that is clearable by guilds.

[Jaylock]

I agree with a lot of the guys in here. The fact that Frost DK's needs to be in range of the boss for long fixed periods is a problem. You see so many Frost DK's ignoring game mechanics (myself include sometimes as i am no saint xD) because they dont want to lose out on the dps meter. I can't remember when i last saw a Frost DK soaking on Krosus :P

The sad reality is: BoS = Tunnel vision = not fun unless you think the dps meter is the game.

Mechanics > DPS

Have you not learned that by now?

[RuneDK]

Mechanics > DPS

Have you not learned that by now?

It's actually raid strengths vs raid weaknesses....a DK's biggest weakness is movement...so your goal should be as a raid leader to make them move as little as possible. so any mechanics they can do while staying relatively close to the boss and losing as little damage as possible is the goal. Otherwise, if you make them do mechanics similarly to a DH then well there's no reason to bring a DK.

[Kendros]

It's actually raid strengths vs raid weaknesses....a DK's biggest weakness is movement...so your goal should be as a raid leader to make them move as little as possible. so any mechanics they can do while staying relatively close to the boss and losing as little damage as possible is the goal. Otherwise, if you make them do mechanics similarly to a DH then well there's no reason to bring a DK.

Most fights requires everyone to focus on mechanics specialy during progression, theres no such thing "oh youll lose more dps than the rest of us doing this so just sit on boss while everyone else carry your ass".

[RuneDK]

Most fights requires everyone to focus on mechanics specialy during progression, theres no such thing "oh youll lose more dps than the rest of us doing this so just sit on boss while evertone else carry your ass".

I didn't say you shouldn't do mechanics....I said your raid should play to the strengths and weaknesses of the classes in raid. You have DK's do mechanics still, but keep them close....so for instance they grab cakes that are close to trilliax not cakes around the room. They stand on swirlies close to Krosus cause there'd be too much downtime to have them go to the mid/far ones. Especially with how tight a lot of the fights were for high end progression before the trait buffs and nerfs of bosses.

[Raiz]

Most fights requires everyone to focus on mechanics specialy during progression, theres no such thing "oh youll lose more dps than the rest of us doing this so just sit on boss while evertone else carry your ass".

Not sure to understand here... Isn't that obvious he's doing mechanics ? If you want the DK to move as far as possible from krosus for soaking damage and let the dh stay relatively close to the boss, then by all mean do so.

Really, I don't understand your point. Don't you want DK BoS to soak the closest area from bosses ? If I had a raid group full of melees I'd easily put dk on the closest ones from bosses and the rest a little further since they have better mobility ? That's not carrying their asses, that's called using their mobility to their full potential and so their best mechanics.

What did you have in mind ?

[Urioh]

Unholy's weakness on target swaps is nothing near what it used to be before Legion, as well as when you run Clawing Shadows it's easy to swap back and forth. Not nearly as bad as people have been saying.

idk about that fam .... target swapping with wounds is actually pretty fucking awful and has been since launch ...

any who Frost is looking super good rn in comparison to Unholy on ptr from the testing ive done / seen ... the UF/DA combo nerf didnt really help either

Not to mention on top of that DA has super issues with her AI on live/ptr rn ..... with no fix in sight ... sigh

I was really banking on our new legendary(gloves) to be good but that turned out pretty bad as well.

ofc tuning isnt done so i mean theres still hope.

But for now id start getting frost legos if u dont have them all already.

[Exotath]

idk about that fam .... target swapping with wounds is actually pretty fucking awful and has been since launch ...

any who Frost is looking super good rn in comparison to Unholy on ptr from the testing ive done / seen ... the UF/DA combo nerf didnt really help either

Not to mention on top of that DA has super issues with her AI on live/ptr rn ..... with no fix in sight ... sigh

I was really banking on our new legendary(gloves) to be good but that turned out pretty bad as well.

ofc tuning isnt done so i mean theres still hope.

But for now id start getting frost legos if u dont have them all already.

Damn, I really hope UH comes up more before release of the patch. Not to blow smoke but considering how good you are at UH that feedback is pretty disappointing to hear. I like both specs but a fair bit of me was looking forward to playing UH that would be in line with frost next tier.

How about the new leg. ring that gives bursting sores? Think it will be bracers/new ring next tier?

[Frolk]

Hope we can figure this out soon, almost gotten 52traits in all 3specs, and i wanna know which of frost or unholy i should pump all my AP into D:

[Deleted]

You can either bank your AP or for now just spend it in your main raiding spec, an extra 300-900 strength in one spec will not put you at a disadvantage, which is the way concordance was designed (flawed in my opinion since concordance in itself is so lacklustre).

What will be interesting to see are the two play-styles interacting with mechanics in ToS, as crucial as one shot mechanics are in every fight, having on demand and high sustainable output damage for certain key moments have always been Frosts' strength over Unholy, despite the latter being able to smash out most of its damage output from range.

[Nemesquish]

Concordance is lackluster? What?...Rofl

[Deleted]

One of the reasons why it had to be buffed. After 52 points have been invested into your character's main spec, how much do you think an extra point is worth? Napkin maths says around 0.24% at my current ilevel. This assuming an average uptime of 33% and that i'm on the target full time for that duration.

The initial point of concordance is 'OK' (assuming a 2% buff on napkin math) but as we're approaching the AK cap of 40 and nearing the stage (possible months) where it's impossible to grind out AP for the next trait level, in terms of content relevancy, yeah I stand by my statement.

Lastly, given your signature, you seem to be a high parsing FDK who's also cleared mythic content so I'm sure you're familiar with the difference between DK's who've parsed well today vs those who have parsed well before concordance was released, the difference being a combination of kill time, raid setup, tactics and last but not least rng, with concordance adding to the latter.

[Geddya]

Finally I managed to get my Unholy weapon to 52 now and now keeping my AP into bank to give it to the strongest spec when patch comes live!!

Think is the best solution....

[Nemesquish]

One of the reasons why it had to be buffed. After 52 points have been invested into your character's main spec, how much do you think an extra point is worth? Napkin maths says around 0.24% at my current ilevel. This assuming an average uptime of 33% and that i'm on the target full time for that duration.

The initial point of concordance is 'OK' (assuming a 2% buff on napkin math) but as we're approaching the AK cap of 40 and nearing the stage (possible months) where it's impossible to grind out AP for the next trait level, in terms of content relevancy, yeah I stand by my statement.

Lastly, given your signature, you seem to be a high parsing FDK who's also cleared mythic content so I'm sure you're familiar with the difference between DK's who've parsed well today vs those who have parsed well before concordance was released, the difference being a combination of kill time, raid setup, tactics and last but not least rng, with concordance adding to the latter.

The reason it had to be buffed is due to the fact its going to take forever to cap it out, where as before you would have had it maxed a week or so after tomb released.

Its insanely good for Dk's due to all our burst and AP scaling/buffers. Far and away better for Dk's than any other class. To say its only OK for 1 point, or lackluster for the others is pretty off base seeing as its going to give dps close to that of a trinket when its nearing max.

[Deleted]

The reason it had to be buffed is due to the fact its going to take forever to cap it out,

Firstly here's a quote from the developers

Concordance of the Legionfall
Chance to activate slightly increased.
Now grants 4,000 Strength, Agility, Intellect, or Versatility at rank 1 (was 2,000).
Additional ranks now increase this value by 300 per rank (was 200).
Effects are now reduced by 50% in PvP situations.
Developers’ Note: While additional ranks of Concordance of Legionfall are intended to have a low impact, the trait was overall weaker than it needed to be. With these changes, it provides a stronger up-front benefit, and very slightly more value for Artifact Power spent past the first rank. These changes also result in an overall nerf in PvP, where we are continuing to monitor its performance. Source

where as before you would have had it maxed a week or so after tomb released.

Before AK was nerfed to 40, it would have taken around 90+ years to get concordance maxed out. In short, concordance was never intended to be maxed out, period and as I'm re-reading your first quote we both seem to agree on that.

Its insanely good for Dk's due to all our burst and AP scaling/buffers. Far and away better for Dk's than any other class. To say its only OK for 1 point, or lackluster for the others is pretty off base seeing as its going to give dps close to that of a trinket when its nearing max.

If by insanely good you mean less than a 2.5% increase in dps at 54 trait levels in patch 7.2, then fair play to you. But just bare in mind that the old trait path, for the bonus trait, the initial point was worth 5% and every additional point was worth 0.5%, resulting in a 14.5% net gain in damage. That was worth the grind for some raiders before NH and was both doable for most Heroic/Mythic raiders who played the game regularly. It's not worth the grind now, the initial point only representing a 2% gain in a 5 minute fight, and less so with fights requiring some sort of mechanics. Every additional point, as stated in my earlier post, is worth a fraction of a percent.

I've also taken the liberty of simming the average dps of your character on raidbots (apologies) just to have an idea of what the power gains could mean for you. Bare in mind this is just an average of course, but as it currently stands you sim at 945k dps and one point of strength is worth 23 pts of dps, with concordance uptime averaging at 32%. Source.

Napkin math will give you the following, ((23*300*0.32)/945k)*100 = 0.234% increase. That's less than a quarter of a percent, or in real terms 2.2k dps increase, which out of 945k is pitiful and barely worth the grind, as intended by Blizzard and their developers.

Unless strength is worth over 5 times the amount, in ToS, there's really no need to go all ham grinding out Concordance on your DK. If you actually want any meaninful dps gains, you'd monitor PTR performance of other dps classes and it "may" be quicker/beneficial to level a raiding alt, if "max dps" for your guild was that important to them and yourself.