[Compilation] DK Questions and Answers

[TomGreen]

At what point in gear levels does unholy match/beat frost dps?

[Mendenbarr]

At what point in gear levels does unholy match/beat frost dps?

Unholy is within 2-3% of frost DW, and 0.5% of frost 2H, at nearly all gear levels. I would not say there is any one gear level where unholy will match or surpass frost, and I'd say that it pretty much matches frost's dps at every gear level (if you call within 3% matching).

[Mendenbarr]

Hi sorry if was answered I didn't read all 14 pages ^^

What is the requirement for soul Reaper to do additional damage, i.e. what does "Below 35%" mean.

Is it a) 34% or lower or b) 35% and 1 Damage taken?

35% and 1 damage taken. Soul reaper will start hitting as soon as the target hits 35% on the default blizz health %.

[DingDongKing]

Armory - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Yaama/advanced

I've mainly played Unholy but found it to be quite difficult to be productive with on Paragons whilst on Garrosh I just felt wrong throwing diseases onto MCs and wasn't sure how to nuke them down under Garry's feet. So as a result, I want to consistently play Frost and try it out. I really really struggled on Garrosh with Frost. I think I did something stupid like 140k on Flex. It was a struggle. It's something I noticed even on other fights is that I can't keep my DPS constant. It spikes occasionally but I'm struggling with rune management/procs etc.I've read Mendenbarr's excellent Frost guide and it was immense for DW and Unholy, but for Frost 2H I really am at a loss. I was half considering switching off Skada and just focusing on the priority versus whether it was yielding numbers or not.

Questions - What's the bread and butter basics to a Frost rotation? What's the balance of Frost Strikes vs Obliterates etc etc? Thanks!

[Aaeru]

Hi

I've been playing DW Frost pretty much ever since Dragon Soul progress and was quite happy with it.
Now however we're progressing Heroic Siegecrafter and I've been wondering, since from here on out it's basically all Single Target fights except for Garrosh P1 (we play Siegecrafter with Mines killed on the lane), wether it's viable to switch to 2H frost for the last 3 bosses.

Here's my current armory (with statweights simmed for 2 Targets/Heavy Movement): "Shiver - Blackmoore-EU - Try It Later" (not linked cuz I'm not allowed to yet )

I've got Britomart's Jagged Pike HWF on my bank for a 2H weapon.

Since I'm stuck at work/uni all day lately I've had no time to sim it myself so anyone giving some input would be much appreciated.

Also, when I resimmed for DW single target encounters, simcraft tried to sell me Haste as more powerful than mastery, anyone got a clue what went wrong there?

[DingDongKing]

SimCraft seems very horny for Haste it seems. I just ran a sim where it weighed it far ahead of Mastery for 2H Frost. I took the stat weights from SimCraft, put them into MrRobot then optimized, exported the template to SimCraft and got almost the same DPS back. It then weighed Haste lower.

However, I am considering swapping from Mastery to Haste for my own 542 ilvl DK just to see how far the playstyle ends. I personally prefer the more spammy DW Frost and even Unholy has a nice fast feel to it. 2H Frost just involved too much patience and balancing the Rime/KM/RP element.

[SSHA778]

SimCraft seems very horny for Haste it seems. I just ran a sim where it weighed it far ahead of Mastery for 2H Frost. I took the stat weights from SimCraft, put them into MrRobot then optimized, exported the template to SimCraft and got almost the same DPS back. It then weighed Haste lower.

The flip-flop is because you made significant changes to the gear, which invalidated the stat weights you generated in the first place. This is not the proper way to use stat weights, because stat weights are only valid near the gear from which they were generated.

Stat weights are like the blue line in this image, and your DPS is like the red line (though not necessarily of the same shape):


They're a localized approximation of your DPS based on your current gear. The larger changes you make to your gear, the further you move away from the local point of approximation (x,f(a)), which means your approximation becomes worse (i.e., you're moving far left or right from the intersection).

Generate weights, change 2-3 pieces (ideally just 1), rerun the weights again, and change another 2-3 pieces based on the new weights. Repeat until convergence (DPS doesn't change significantly).

[edit: image from http://www.zweigmedia.com/RealWorld/...earapprox.html]

[Mendenbarr]

Armory - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Yaama/advanced

I've mainly played Unholy but found it to be quite difficult to be productive with on Paragons whilst on Garrosh I just felt wrong throwing diseases onto MCs and wasn't sure how to nuke them down under Garry's feet. So as a result, I want to consistently play Frost and try it out. I really really struggled on Garrosh with Frost. I think I did something stupid like 140k on Flex. It was a struggle. It's something I noticed even on other fights is that I can't keep my DPS constant. It spikes occasionally but I'm struggling with rune management/procs etc.I've read Mendenbarr's excellent Frost guide and it was immense for DW and Unholy, but for Frost 2H I really am at a loss. I was half considering switching off Skada and just focusing on the priority versus whether it was yielding numbers or not.

Questions - What's the bread and butter basics to a Frost rotation? What's the balance of Frost Strikes vs Obliterates etc etc? Thanks!

The gist is, you want to ask yourself, do I have a rime proc, or a KM proc? If the answer is yes, hit HB to spend the time proc or obliterate to spend the KM proc. If no, ask yourself, am I about to cap runic power, or are any of my runes about to cap? If the answer is yes, spend runic on FS, and spend the runes on obliterate. If you have no procs up, and nothing is about to cap, you hit FS. If you can't hit FS, you hit obliterate instead.
That, combined with T1, T5, disease management, CD usage, and soul reaper is really all there is to 2H frost.

Hi

I've been playing DW Frost pretty much ever since Dragon Soul progress and was quite happy with it.
Now however we're progressing Heroic Siegecrafter and I've been wondering, since from here on out it's basically all Single Target fights except for Garrosh P1 (we play Siegecrafter with Mines killed on the lane), wether it's viable to switch to 2H frost for the last 3 bosses.

Here's my current armory (with statweights simmed for 2 Targets/Heavy Movement): "Shiver - Blackmoore-EU - Try It Later" (not linked cuz I'm not allowed to yet )

I've got Britomart's Jagged Pike HWF on my bank for a 2H weapon.

Since I'm stuck at work/uni all day lately I've had no time to sim it myself so anyone giving some input would be much appreciated.

Also, when I resimmed for DW single target encounters, simcraft tried to sell me Haste as more powerful than mastery, anyone got a clue what went wrong there?

DW, with equivalent weapons, is still slightly higher than 2H on single target fights. Paragons cleaves down kuchongs, and whichever target you juke before korven. Garrosh cleaves in p1, and for MCs in p2/p3, and in the terrace and jade temple phase. Even with no cleave, DW will do slightly better, but 2H frost is still perfectly fine to play. Just don't expect your DPS to go up much, if at all. See below answers for haste explanation.

The flip-flop is because you made significant changes to the gear, which invalidated the stat weights you generated in the first place. This is not the proper way to use stat weights, because stat weights are only valid near the gear from which they were generated.

Stat weights are like the blue line in this image, and your DPS is like the red line (though not necessarily of the same shape):


They're a localized approximation of your DPS based on your current gear. The larger changes you make to your gear, the further you move away from the local point of approximation (x,f(a)), which means your approximation becomes worse (i.e., you're moving far left or right from the intersection).

Generate weights, change 2-3 pieces (ideally just 1), rerun the weights again, and change another 2-3 pieces based on the new weights. Repeat until convergence (DPS doesn't change significantly).

[edit: image from http://www.zweigmedia.com/RealWorld/...earapprox.html]

Euliat is right, and haste in particular actually gets even worse. SimC reports a bunch of mini haste breakpoints, where the uptime on the 2-set gets significant boosts to uptime, but they only happen with 100% boss uptime. Drop that number down to even 99%, and the breakpoints disappear, so they are not generally worth gearing towards. It's worth considering either running on a non-patchwerk fight (I suggest ultraxion, which is nothing but periodic stuns), or turning off the 2-set, or simply ignoring the haste value simC spits out and assuming that it's about 1 less than crit.

[DingDongKing]

So with that in mind should I be going with Mastery or Haste after Crit?

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Yaama/advanced

That's what it looks like right now.

[Mendenbarr]

So with that in mind should I be going with Mastery or Haste after Crit?

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Yaama/advanced

That's what it looks like right now.

Go for mastery after crit as a general rule. Simming your own toon will give you the best results, though be wary of the false haste breakpoints described in my above post.

[pkm]

So how does a frost do their opener on a boss? I mean, yeah i think you run in with outbreak, but what of trinks and crusader proccing after you engage? Dont you have to reapply them anyway?

[bals]

dw or 2hand?
either way FF is going to be constantly rewrote and bp doesn't do any damage

[pkm]

I was talking in general but didnt know it made a difference with either.

I tested unholy/frost disease damage on a dummy. I waited till my feather of jikun was at its max with the 15% str proc and then did the same for frost but frost also has pillar of frost ontop of that to add. That made frosts diseases tick way harder. I probably did something wrong but yeah i was looking at higher damaging diseases for frost.

[bals]

dw you're spamming hb so it's going to reapply ff constantly
2hand you should get enough rime procs to reapply ff fairly often.

[DingDongKing]

What should my Rune Regen be at?

[Markulino]

With the comming of the 6.0 perks one question came to my mind. Should I replace my Rune of the Fallen Crusader on my main hand weapon with the Rune of Cinderglacier or should I stay as I am?

[Mendenbarr]

With the comming of the 6.0 perks one question came to my mind. Should I replace my Rune of the Fallen Crusader on my main hand weapon with the Rune of Cinderglacier or should I stay as I am?

Right now, fallen crusader remains the best rune for all DPS. It seems to be their intent to change that come 6.0, but that's so far away that we have no idea what the optimal runeforge will be at that time.

[evanesce]

hi uhm first of all i'm so sorry for my bad english, i'll try to tell my big question mark on my head
Evanesce/Twisting Nether(EU)...this is my dk. i've tried to sim her but i cant understand that program. as stat priority for DW you say "mastery > crit > haste". i've tried to use that stats like 2 weeks but my dps is reduced like 15-20k in a normal fight like malkorok hc ..i'm using "mastery > haste > crit". because mastery thats for sure must be highest one, than haste (because it increases attack speed, that means more KM procs, which means %100 chance to crit frost strikes or obliterates), than crit. so my question is; if we have a chance to make %100 crit, why we need crit instead of haste ? and; how much it makes difference chosing mast>haste>crit on simcraft ?
i hope i've told my qeustions clearly, thank you

[bals]

frost spec uses frost presence.

- - - Updated - - -

so my question is; if we have a chance to make %100 crit, why we need crit instead of haste ? and; how much it makes difference chosing mast>haste>crit on simcraft ?
i hope i've told my qeustions clearly, thank you

the issue with haste is we have many skills and abilities that supplement our rp/rune regen making us easily gcd capped. good usage of ams (with regenerative magic glyph), trinkets, plague leech, the level 75 talent (blood tap is optimal), and any downtime in fights make it easy to gcd cap on their own which makes haste completely useless.

[Mendenbarr]

hi uhm first of all i'm so sorry for my bad english, i'll try to tell my big question mark on my head
Evanesce/Twisting Nether(EU)...this is my dk. i've tried to sim her but i cant understand that program. as stat priority for DW you say "mastery > crit > haste". i've tried to use that stats like 2 weeks but my dps is reduced like 15-20k in a normal fight like malkorok hc ..i'm using "mastery > haste > crit". because mastery thats for sure must be highest one, than haste (because it increases attack speed, that means more KM procs, which means %100 chance to crit frost strikes or obliterates), than crit. so my question is; if we have a chance to make %100 crit, why we need crit instead of haste ? and; how much it makes difference chosing mast>haste>crit on simcraft ?
i hope i've told my qeustions clearly, thank you

bals went into the reasons haste is bad, but you are right that it gives more KM procs, more chances for 100% crits. That makes crit weaker yes, but it's still a numbers game. Crit always helps with HB, PS, pillar of frost spikes, disease damage, basically everything that isn't FS. And you'll never have nor want enough haste to always have KM up, so it helps with FS as well, even if less so. What simC tells us is that you get more damage per point from crit than you get from haste, if you are following the same rotation that the sim is. SimC knows about km, and takes it into account, and also takes into account how GCD capped we are.

Edit: A good starting point for learning to use simC is http://www.destinysoftworks.com/2013...tioncraft.html