Masterfrost in 6.0?

[Cortic]

So with all the changes coming in 6.0 and the way KM reacts with Oblit/FS (2h/DW etc) will it not be *best* as a DW DK to omit Oblit from the rotation? That way, it will enable a faster playstyle, no KM munching and promotes a different style/type of gameplay to 2H frost.

Or should we all just respec to UH and be happy?

[Stacie]

So with all the changes coming in 6.0 and the way KM reacts with Oblit/FS (2h/DW etc) will it not be *best* as a DW DK to omit Oblit from the rotation? That way, it will enable a faster playstyle, no KM munching and promotes a different style/type of gameplay to 2H frost.

Or should we all just respec to UH and be happy?

2h frost single target owns
Unholy aoe owns
DW is weaker than unholy and 2h frost single target.

duel spec and swap from 2h to unholy fight depending if its got no adds 2h if it has unholy.. if you want all around good unholy.. DW frost is close but still weaker than unholy at both aoe and single target.

My advice level 2h frost then go unholy after you finish the heroic instance farm.

[Cortic]

2h frost single target owns
Unholy aoe owns
DW is weaker than unholy and 2h frost single target.

duel spec and swap from 2h to unholy fight depending if its got no adds 2h if it has unholy.. if you want all around good unholy.. DW frost is close but still weaker than unholy at both aoe and single target.

My advice level 2h frost then go unholy after you finish the heroic instance farm.

Well that makes me sad, as I love to DW. However, I also love to maximise performance so it seems the slow-waiting 2hder Frost will have to be the go (or UH but I do like to keep my 2nd spec as Blood JIC).

Thank you for your advice.

[Deathquoi]

DW is always weaker than 2h early in an expansion.

[Stacie]

The spec's are not that far apart though tbh you might just be a better player at 1 spec than another. Always worth testing yourself?

[Cortic]

The spec's are not that far apart though tbh you might just be a better player at 1 spec than another. Always worth testing yourself?

More the fact that I am not looking forward to playing my DK with pooling resources (as I did with my rogue). Was hoping that one playstyle would offer equal DPS for fast-paced gameplay. I do, however, understand that as the tier's progress this gap might lessen.

[Stacie]

More the fact that I am not looking forward to playing my DK with pooling resources (as I did with my rogue). Was hoping that one playstyle would offer equal DPS for fast-paced gameplay. I do, however, understand that as the tier's progress this gap might lessen.

You might be disappointed a few sims have shown pooling or hitting anything off cooldown come very close. Example ignoring KM procs. We are still a broken class with crap mobility and scaling with all the other issues :P

[Schizoide]

I think the OP was actually asking about Masterfrost vs Mastersimple, when he talked about omitting Obliterate. Bit confusing, as he called that Masterfrost which does use Obliterate. Lots of people mix them up.

DW T17H Masterfrost ilvl680: 30,030 DPS
DW T17H Mastersimple ilvl680: 29,447 DPS (-2.0%)

So the answer is that mastersimple is a small DPS loss at T17H gear levels. But what happens if you scale that gear from itemlvl 680 (T17H) to 740 (T18H)?

DW T18H Masterfrost ilvl740: 55,488 DPS
DW T18H Mastersimple ilvl740: 54,399 DPS (-2.0%)

Well that's surprising. I expected the much higher mastery an entire tier higher to make mastersimple less of a DPS loss, but it is unchanged, still at 2%. Does it hold up at T19H?

DW T19H Masterfrost ilvl800: 123,924 DPS
DW T19H Mastersimple ilvl800: 118,840 DPS (-4.3%)

No, actually it goes in the opposite direction! You can't ignore 4.3%. I can't account for why Simcraft is producing these results, but I don't hide results just because they don't support my argument. Anyone have ideas why this is happening? For the mastersimple actionlist, I simply commented out the Obliterate line and added a Death and Decay action followed by a Plague Strike action, but requiring >0 Unholy runes. To scale, I used a simple "scale_to_itemlevel=800" override.

Anyway, of course this is just scaling the preliminary T17H BiS profile in Simcraft up to very high itemlvls, so while it predicts performance at the end of the expansion, it is only a rough prediction. Stat weights, etc, will have changed by then too.

@Mr. Chaos: That's correct, there's no particular reason to delay attacks for Killing Machine or pool resources in beta at this time. Of course they still have a couple weeks before release to fix that. Personally I don't want them to, because their fix will mandate the use of swing timers.

[Taninsam]

DW T19H Masterfrost ilvl800: 123,924 DPS
DW T19H Mastersimple ilvl800: 118,840 DPS (-4.3%)

No, actually it goes in the opposite direction! You can't ignore 4.3%. I can't account for why Simcraft is producing these results, but I don't hide results just because they don't support my argument. Anyone have ideas why this is happening?

My guess is that with very high mastery levels, the 20% added to rime'd HB (lvl 100 OB perk) really starts to show its power. If this is no error/bug, it's wonderful news indeed.

[Deleted]

You might be disappointed a few sims have shown pooling or hitting anything off cooldown come very close. Example ignoring KM procs. We are still a broken class with crap mobility and scaling with all the other issues :P

Thats just not true, Unholy is actually one of the best scaling specs on beta atm.
Frost is fucked still, but not as bad as it was in MoP.

[Schizoide]

He spoke about pooling resources and ignoring KM, so he was clearly talking about Frost. None of Frost's problems were fixed in 6.0; if you thought it has problems in 5.x, they remain in the expansion. The only real change is it plays much, much slower. Well, Pillar is free now too, that's nice.

@Taninsam: If I add mastery alone to the T17H profile, the gap between masterfrost and mastersimple does get shorter. Several of the gear pieces in the BiS T17H set don't have mastery on them, that could account for it-- but the T17H set gives 50.3% mastery and the T19H 80.9%, so that is significant. But yeah, it could be the +20% HB from the improved obliterate perk.

[Taninsam]

If you add mastery alone, not using OB may result in a higher output due to the sheer power of mastery-affected abilities and poor scaling of pure physical strikes like OB. However, when everything scales, OB gains power (specially with increased strength and multistrike values), directly affecting the potency of rime'd HB. In that sense, I can see some good synergy between higher ilvls and that perk.

[Clash the DK]

It wouldn't make sense for the +20% HB perk to affect things in that way because that is a fixed amount. So I don't know why there is a discrepancy coming from that third sim result.

Mastersimple relies on high Mastery but also a certain amount of Haste to pull off. Enough Haste to where you can incrementally ignore that second Unholy rune. That's a big part of it. So, there is synergy between Mastery and Haste that needs to be taken into consideration when predicting things. Not sure how much Haste you are using and then scaling up with those results.


In other news, I wish that both 2H and DW Frost were tuned to use the Masterfrost rotation. Hastefrost is so incredibly boring. And Mastersimple just feels wrong without Obliterate.

During ToT when RC was broken, but in a good way.....That gave me the opportunity to raid for a while using a combination of Masterfrost and RC for the first time. And it felt great. After being confined to RE for so long to get the best results, that combination was a breadth of fresh air. It reminded me of WotLK just a little. It was fun.

My personal preference would be Masterfrost + RC + 2H. I want to have more fun with my Armageddon Xmog!

[Schizoide]

There is no real best choice for the rune regen talent. RC was perfectly viable and competitive even after the bug was fixed. Macroed Blood Tap does sim on top by a very small margin, but that margin is small enough that if you prefer RC you should continue doing so. This applies to all 4 DK specs.

Unholy does (slightly) favor Blood Tap as it masks the orphan Frost rune when transitioning to/from AE. But if you really hate Blood Tap Unholy is perfectly fine with RC or even RE too. Only thing Unholy can't do is game RE.

[RuneDK]

2h frost single target owns
Unholy aoe owns
DW is weaker than unholy and 2h frost single target.

duel spec and swap from 2h to unholy fight depending if its got no adds 2h if it has unholy.. if you want all around good unholy.. DW frost is close but still weaker than unholy at both aoe and single target.

My advice level 2h frost then go unholy after you finish the heroic instance farm.

That's for the first tier. They did nothing to fix the scaling problems 2H frost has had the last two expansions(cata/mop). I'd say by heroic gear DW and unholy will be the top two.

[Taninsam]

It wouldn't make sense for the +20% HB perk to affect things in that way because that is a fixed amount. So I don't know why there is a discrepancy coming from that third sim result.

Mastersimple relies on high Mastery but also a certain amount of Haste to pull off. Enough Haste to where you can incrementally ignore that second Unholy rune. That's a big part of it. So, there is synergy between Mastery and Haste that needs to be taken into consideration when predicting things. Not sure how much Haste you are using and then scaling up with those results.

Well, "+20%" is the opposite of fixed. It's not like the perk adds "9000 frost damage" to howling blast. That would be fixed.

As long as Obliterate possesses enough value as an ability, having it use an Unholy rune is very useful at higher levels of haste since you'll be using one less GCD to dump that rune. When you are GCD capped, every GCD used on low or non-damaging abilities is a dps loss.

Anyway, it's way too early to start thinking about ilvl800, so for now I'd just focus on 6.0 and t17.

[Clash the DK]

There is no real best choice for the rune regen talent. RC was perfectly viable and competitive even after the bug was fixed. Macroed Blood Tap does sim on top by a very small margin, but that margin is small enough that if you prefer RC you should continue doing so. This applies to all 4 DK specs.

Unholy does (slightly) favor Blood Tap as it masks the orphan Frost rune when transitioning to/from AE. But if you really hate Blood Tap Unholy is perfectly fine with RC or even RE too. Only thing Unholy can't do is game RE.

That is simply not true. Mastersimple demands BT or RE. RC works best with a rotation consisting of Obliterate. There is a difference. We've had this conversation before many times.

[Schizoide]

Mastersimple (like every other DPS DK spec) works fine with RC. Any difference is tiny.

[Clash the DK]

Well, "+20%" is the opposite of fixed. It's not like the perk adds "9000 frost damage" to howling blast. That would be fixed.

As long as Obliterate possesses enough value as an ability, having it use an Unholy rune is very useful at higher levels of haste since you'll be using one less GCD to dump that rune. When you are GCD capped, every GCD used on low or non-damaging abilities is a dps loss.

Anyway, it's way too early to start thinking about ilvl800, so for now I'd just focus on 6.0 and t17.

What I mean is that the perk will always give 20% of a HB no matter the damage of the HB. There won't be a tier of gear where the perk would affect things differently. The only difference is how much Mastery you would gain which will affect the value of the runes (HB/PS vs Obliterate/Rime). And that should give an eventual advantage to the frost-damage-heavy Mastersimple.

With that being said, the relative value of Haste has changed in WoD. Perhaps that is what's causing discrepancies.

- - - Updated - - -

Mastersimple (like every other DPS DK spec) works fine with RC. Any difference is tiny.

Yeah sure, just like PL or UB is totally a choice. I'm not having this argument again. Hopefully in WoD even DW Frost will be using Obliterate at least some... That way we don't have to have this discussion ever again.

[Schizoide]

PL is a much larger difference, and that gap widens even further in 6.0.