Frost vs Unholy 7.2.5

[Deleted]

I currently have 52 traits in both Unholy and Frost. Got belt and ring for frost and missing only the bracers for unholy. Which setup yields the best result on the PTR atm? I'm leaning towards Arbiter in 7.2.5 since i got the shoulders also.

ring and bracers for frost seems superior atm, for uh i dont know but looks like will still be behind frost

[Deleted]

Unholy meets it on all points, and complexity doesn't mean it's worse.

More complexity means that you can messup more often, especially with mechanics and target switches. Thats why a more complex spec should have more potential.

[Maxweii]

The nuances of Breath can match the complexity of Unholy (which isn't as hard as it's made out to seem).

[Kaver]

Mechanics > DPS

Have you not learned that by now?

What the.....? I just said the problem is that the spec encourages players to ingnore mechanics. This statement is based on my knowledge of mechanics > dps.

Please dont an ignoramus.

[Cerunnir]

I was on PTR the entire day today and did ST crash tests on the boss dummies for both Unholy and Frost and had some... interesting results. Before mentioning anything I'd like to say that these are the results I had for my gear and my stats, they most likely do not apply to you, and even if they do, they might be wrong in the first place.
For Unholy:
I did multiple tests with different legendaries and the most DPS seemed to be with the new ring that gives us baseline Bursting Sores and either Shoulders or Bracers. The new gloves seem extremely undertuned and they also do not activate our 2-set (15% damage for 3 seconds when a member of the Army of the Dead is summoned, duration stacks), guess the skulker didn't get an Army membership card.
Now for the interesting part. I ran tests with and without T19 2-set on the side (always had T20 4-set) and to my surprise Castigator was beating Clawing Shadows consistently. My stats are definitely helping a Castigator build a lot more than a CS build but the difference was quite big (~820k with CS, ~890k with Casti). My stats for these were 29C/17H/69M/1V and the trinkets used were 905 Foci and 915 Eye of Command as I have those on live (crit from Eye was calculated into the 29% I mentioned, before that I have ~24C). It is worth mentioning that the highest DPS result I got was with Castigator+Bracers+New Ring+T19 2-set. The highest DPS result for CS on the other hand was with Shoulders+New Ring closely followed by Bracers+New Ring+T19 2-set.
For Frost:
As a frost DK on live currently I was extremely disappointed by Frost DPS without CoF. I tested without CoF as previous tier trinkets get nerfed (historically they do) and seeing Draught nerfed for Warriors gave me the gut feeling CoF would soon follow. With T20 4-set the best legendary combo I could use were the Bracers and the ERW ring, as expected. The bracers seemed to gain a lot of value because of the extended duration (and power) of pillar. I maxed out at ~810k DPS using both ERW charges on the first breath and then having a small 20 sec breath without ERW going into a 1 charge ERW breath next. I also tried Obliteration just out of curiosity but the results were very underwhelming (around 690k DPS with standard MG spec).
I would like to see what people have to say and share their experience to see if I'm crazy or not. Keep in mind all these results are anecdotal, I didn't log anything.
As credentials I guess I can mention I'm 10/10M raider (all cutting edge this xpac) and 913 (Frost)/915 (Unholy) on live.
As a closing statement: If you think these results are wrong, or you're sure they are wrong, there is no reason to call me out on it, the tests were iffy with 170 ms latency and a generally unstable testing environment and are not meant to sway the opinion of the community.

You did not test Unholy Frenzy though, only Castigator and Clawing Shadows. Most people seem to agree that Unholy Frenzy will be the go to in that tier for next patch, both with SR and DA. I've been testing extensivly on PTR, hours upon hours of testing different setups.

It seems to be that there are two main builds for UH atm:

EF, PP(or BRW), UF, IC and SR with Bracers + New ring for "Overall and Cleave".
EF, PP, UF, IC(or SI) and DA with Shoulders + New ring for ST.

[Deleted]

You did not test Unholy Frenzy though, only Castigator and Clawing Shadows. Most people seem to agree that Unholy Frenzy will be the go to in that tier for next patch, both with SR and DA. I've been testing extensivly on PTR, hours upon hours of testing different setups.

It seems to be that there are two main builds for UH atm:

EF, PP(or BRW), UF, IC and SR with Bracers + New ring.
EF, PP, UF, IC(or SI) and DA with Shoulders + New ring.

I did not test UF as it seems to be useful only in patchwerk and also had its recent buffs reverted. I'll give it a whirl though.

[Cerunnir]

I did not test UF as it seems to be useful only in patchwerk. I'll give it a whirl though.

While UF isnt directly very powerfull, it effectivly double the number of free death coils you can cast. With UF double doom also become quite usefull. UF works really well because it inject alot of resources we need into our rotation. It fills the holes in the rotation with free DC, which also procs more runic corruption. This build with SR was the fastest I saw army come up again, at around 2 minutes and 4:20, so you get 3 full durations of army inside a 5 minute fight.

[Deleted]

While UF isnt directly very powerfull, it effectivly double the number of free death coils you can cast. With UF double doom also become quite usefull. UF works really well because it inject alot of resources we need into our rotation. It fills the holes in the rotation with free DC, which also procs more runic corruption. This build with SR was the fastest I saw army come up again, at around 2 minutes and 4:20, so you get 3 full durations of army inside a 5 minute fight.

Yes those are good points. I was very intrigued to test UF just because of what you said about rune regen.
Now to share my best results for Casti vs UF with 29C/17H/69M/1V stats, T19 2-set, T20 4-set, 915 Eye of Command, 905 Foci, Bracers+ New Ring and relics being 2 x FC and 1 x FS.
Casti:

UF:

(if images seem not to work, right click on the broken image icon and open in a new tab, seems to work for me?)
The tests were shorter so I used 1 pot of pp, lust at start and they were around 8 minutes 50-55 long, just enough for the 7th Apoc to come off CD sort of. AoTD was used the same amount of times.

[Deleted]

This is really incredible work.

Some PTR testing tomorrow it seems!

Did u manage to log those results on Warcraft logs?

It would be interesting to see what the numbers look like by cropping your results to five minutes.

[Deleted]

No but when I get the time I'll set it all up!

[Cerunnir]

Yes those are good points. I was very intrigued to test UF just because of what you said about rune regen.
Now to share my best results for Casti vs UF with 29C/17H/69M/1V stats, T19 2-set, T20 4-set, 915 Eye of Command, 905 Foci, Bracers+ New Ring and relics being 2 x FC and 1 x FS.
Casti:

UF:

(if images seem not to work, right click on the broken image icon and open in a new tab, seems to work for me?)
The tests were shorter so I used 1 pot of pp, lust at start and they were around 8 minutes 50-55 long, just enough for the 7th Apoc to come off CD sort of. AoTD was used the same amount of times.

Your stats is very much in favour of castigator build though.

But maybe castigator is better, who knows? I think castigator would lose some power if you dropped the 2pc though, since that spec probably relay heavily on that extra resource regen.

It would suck if our BiS spec relay on lucky tier 19 titanforged drops.

[Deleted]

I've just briefly tried Unholy Frenzy, with DA and infected claws. I used the shoulders and new ring and as you've said there doesn't seem to be any resource issues, infact there are too many runes to spend. So I've gone back to Blighted Rune Weapon.

I tried to bring my haste up to as much as possible but so far my stats can only reach to 22/20/80, crit, haste and mastery.

I used the new haste/str trinket from ToS to bring my haste up, it's effectively a very good str stat stick when testing on dummies. I'm tempting to use Engine of Eradication, since it looks like they've massively buffed the strength on it, but I wonder about it's proc rate now, given the buff to strength.

Other things to note, Unholy Frenzy can be kept up indefinitely, since the buff timer stacks - some may not be aware of this.
DA itself seems to be doing 9 million per cast @ilevel 910 with shoulders. Again I'm not playing optimally at the moment, say expect that number to increase somewhat.

I wish the ring would allow us to choose another talent other than bursting, but having said that, out of all of the choices, Bursting Sores is probably the best static choice out of the bunch.

[Deleted]

I've just briefly tried Unholy Frenzy, with DA and infected claws. I used the shoulders and new ring and as you've said there doesn't seem to be any resource issues, infact there are too many runes to spend. So I've gone back to Blighted Rune Weapon.

I tried to bring my haste up to as much as possible but so far my stats can only reach to 22/20/80, crit, haste and mastery.

I used the new haste/str trinket from ToS to bring my haste up, it's effectively a very good str stat stick when testing on dummies. I'm tempting to use Engine of Eradication, since it looks like they've massively buffed the strength on it, but I wonder about it's proc rate now, given the buff to strength.

Other things to note, Unholy Frenzy can be kept up indefinitely, since the buff timer stacks - some may not be aware of this.
DA itself seems to be doing 9 million per cast @ilevel 910 with shoulders. Again I'm not playing optimally at the moment, say expect that number to increase somewhat.

I wish the ring would allow us to choose another talent other than bursting, but having said that, out of all of the choices, Bursting Sores is probably the best static choice out of the bunch.

Thanks for the constant feedback you are providing during this PTR cycle, it's great for the rest of us who are not able to do it.

Cheers!

[Cerunnir]

I've just briefly tried Unholy Frenzy, with DA and infected claws. I used the shoulders and new ring and as you've said there doesn't seem to be any resource issues, infact there are too many runes to spend. So I've gone back to Blighted Rune Weapon.

I tried to bring my haste up to as much as possible but so far my stats can only reach to 22/20/80, crit, haste and mastery.

I used the new haste/str trinket from ToS to bring my haste up, it's effectively a very good str stat stick when testing on dummies. I'm tempting to use Engine of Eradication, since it looks like they've massively buffed the strength on it, but I wonder about it's proc rate now, given the buff to strength.

Other things to note, Unholy Frenzy can be kept up indefinitely, since the buff timer stacks - some may not be aware of this.
DA itself seems to be doing 9 million per cast @ilevel 910 with shoulders. Again I'm not playing optimally at the moment, say expect that number to increase somewhat.

I wish the ring would allow us to choose another talent other than bursting, but having said that, out of all of the choices, Bursting Sores is probably the best static choice out of the bunch.

I seem to be getting DA casts at around 10-12 million, around 16-20 with drums. I've seen others who try it with much more haste getting way bigger DA casts than that.

[Deleted]

I seem to be getting DA casts at around 10-12 million, around 16-20 with drums. I've seen others who try it with much more haste getting way bigger DA casts than that.

After testing it really briefly I can confirm that my biggest DA cast was 22 million (drums) with ~60% of the DA hits critting (17% haste). It's a nice spec and when played with legendary shoulders it offsets the damage we lose from losing the haste from Soul Reaper to an extent. I can definitely see this being the go-to pure ST spec for ToS.
I wonder if CS/Casti will be better for cleave/AoE/m+ though. UF is pretty subpar at any sort of cleave compared to those two even with SR specced.

[Maxweii]

Castigator right now in live is viable to play. Is it the top choice? No not at all, but you can still use it to some extent. Much harder of a time than CS to perform well but is playable.
If it comes around that Cast is decent in Tomb that's nothing changing really it's just 'hey this moved up slightly'.

Same thing with Unholy Frenzy, just it really requires you to stick to a target.

[RuneDK]

Castigator right now in live is viable to play. Is it the top choice? No not at all, but you can still use it to some extent. Much harder of a time than CS to perform well but is playable.
If it comes around that Cast is decent in Tomb that's nothing changing really it's just 'hey this moved up slightly'.

Same thing with Unholy Frenzy, just it really requires you to stick to a target.

Then we'd have two specs forced into ignoring as much mechanics as possible. That sounds fun. /sarcasm

[Maxweii]

Then we'd have two specs forced into ignoring as much mechanics as possible. That sounds fun. /sarcasm

Yeah hence why UF is pretty unrealistic, well actually unrealistic to use in a raid since Breath has wiggle room if you have to go off target. UF relies on AA's for most of it's fluidity

[Deleted]

Clearly unholy needs a 15-20yd autoattack range.

[Sazabius]

you clearly hadn't played UH in a while sir

Unholy was dominant most of Warlord's... good sir.