ULTIMATE Frost DK guide for WoD (6.0.3) (DW and 2H) - The Written Guide

[Earendil-ML]

#showtooltip Obliterate
/startattack
/cast Obliterate

Obliterate will start melee attack automatically.Does this micro make some magic?

[Enfilade]

Obliterate will start melee attack automatically.Does this micro make some magic?

I've always found it useful when Obliterate is about a second or two away from coming off cooldown and you have to switch targets. At least that way you can auto attack by hitting the Obliterate key.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure if I can bump this just so people can see it. If not, can a moderator please sticky this?

[Prag]

Thank you for the guide and to everyone who's added notes/corrections since. I didn't see one stickied and was about to go to Icy-Veins. :S

[Deleted]

Added 2H WeakAuras, DW to follow!

[Deleted]

WeakAuras for DW added.

[Deleted]

I just wanted to say I admire all the hard work you're putting into updating this thread. At first it looked a bit mediocre, but it's shaping up to be something really nice. Keep up the good work!

[Dorban]

What does the highest burst AoE dmg, Frost dw, 2h or unholy

[boz0]

What does the highest burst AoE dmg, Frost dw, 2h or unholy

Unholy, for both burst and sustained aoe.

[willyhog]

Hey! Great article! I read through it and I wanted to mention a few things about your suggestions, particularly for the 2H notes that you wrote down. I think you should edit or modify these things to reflect updated/correct information that I’ll provide. Again I don't want to devalue this, but you should change the guide at least somewhat.

(For context, I’m a 5/7 Mythic raider with several 99%+ parses on Warcraft Logs)

Your stat weighting is incorrect for a number of reasons. The weightings only actually hold at particular item levels. For example, I’m running at 675 and I sim multistrike as even with haste and a bit ahead of versatility. So, while you’re not wrong in mentioning those stats as being most important, you should clarify the relation they have to one another. In general, format and clarify this whole section and format the whole article better if you have time.

Purgatory is generally better than Lichborne on fights where AMZ isn’t taken (though for almost every fight in Highmaul, I’d take AMZ anyway). I generally think it is strictly better because it is quite literally a get-out-of-jail-free card that gives space for healing. Your Tier 5 talents are vastly more effective than Lichborne at giving healing, anyway, especially given the context that there are literally zero Highmaul bosses that use any of those effects on raid members. This is preference entirely, however.

Glyph of Outbreak is NOT a DPS increase or at the very best it breaks even. It allows you to PL on CD, but the FS you lose in the meantime draws them about even. It’s best to just PL about once a minute I’ve found in sims and in practice. A lot of people don’t actually know that casting Outbreak while glyphed actually generates blood charges, because it technically constitutes an RP expenditure. It only works if you PL on CD like clockwork and don’t screw up the reapplication of your diseases by going under 30 RP, which is really easy considering the Oblit you get only generates 24. It’s way easier to take PL and NOT glyph Outbreak. Some of the folks over at Icy Veins and I had a nice talk about which way was better and the sims we did found there to be a less than 200 DPS difference between several different methods, glyphed and unglyphed. The moral of the story is the glyph is hardly necessary and might actually be a loss in many circumstances where you can’t reliably use PL.

Both diseases up is NOT a priority for Frost, especially not 2H where mastery isn’t emphasized. In fact, if BP runs off the target altogether I really could care less if it means I get another Obliterate off, because our whole rotation is structured around Obliterate. Keeping Defile up is way way way more important than keeping both diseases up at any rate, and Soul Reaper during execute is more important than anything else including Defile.

Specific breakpoint for RP dumping is >76, because one more Oblit will push RP over the cap. You can generate RP with impunity until you get over 76, in which case you need to dump some. “About to be capped” is pretty vague.

I don’t really know why you want people to use PL only when your BP is about to tick off the target. The entire point of PL is to cash in on a free Obliterate and then immediately thereafter reapply with Outbreak. BP damage is irrelevant.

Your explanation as to why multistrike is better than crit doesn’t actually, well, explain why it’s better. The explanation is more along the lines of this: We get free critical strikes on our moves that make up most of our DPS (Oblit/FS) via Killing Machine. DURING / AT THE MOMENT OF a KM proc, crit offers no marginal benefit to the usage of the skill. That is why crit is bad and multistrike is not.

I vehemently disagree with using HB as a filler for when 2 runes aren’t up for Oblit in your suggestions on 2H rotation. Using HB as a filler instead of waiting for the relevant runes to regen is ALWAYS a dps loss.

[Deleted]

A few things to the guy above me: When talking about stat weights I give the three most important stats indicating the generally most important one, but I refer to simcrafts for exact results. If you're just starting out as a DK, more often than not your best stat is Multistrike for 2H for example, yes this priority will change with gear, this is why i refer to Simcraft for exact results. Your priority as ilvl 675 may be totally different but I think people with those item levels can figure it out for themselves and the 3 most important stats are still just that, the three most important stats.

I explain the benefit of Multistrike over Crit for 2H in the Multistrike section of the detailed guide.

You say that keeping diseases up is not a priority for 2H since you don't stack mastery, I can see where you're coming from on that but your critique on using glyphed Outbreak is that your RP is better spent on FS whose damage is also not increased a lot by our lack of mastery. IMO it gives you a useful way to spend your RP (rather than just using FS because you can) because you will get runes in return by using PL on CD for more oblits (at least you agree with me on this ).

I also don't want ppl to use PL only when BP is about to tick off the target, all I mean to say is that it's better to use it before BP falls off than not use it at all.

On purgatory, TBH i haven't tried it in raids yet but i found it very disappointing when solo'ing because it doesn't prevent fatal damage but requires you to be healed, therefore I did not see the benefit in that. But I do see why you'd pick it.

On other things I could agree with you as well (like HB use as a filler for example) but I'm too busy to update my guide atm and mods can't be bothered to sticky it. I have put a lot of time into this already only to see it pushed back to page 2 or 3 over and over again. I'm letting it rest for now.

[Kerathyl]

Just swapped to frost. Got a few questions.
Plague leech: when to use it? Because of Outbreaks 1min cd and bloodplagues 30sec duration I can only use plague leech at moments when outbreak is not ready.

If I plague leech right before blood plague falls off what do I do next? options:
-HB+PS to reapply diseases
-HB+oblit to reapply frost fever (I guess this could be worth it if I have both frost runes ready and everything else on cd?)
-just keep spamming oblit, and hope for a rime proc to reapply frost fever and not bother with blood plague at all?

[Deleted]

I usually reapply blood plague immediately and then wait for rime proc to cast HB to get a frost fever going.

Plague Leech, use it as much as possible really. (preferably on CD, most rune return)

[Pehnny]

Great guide thanks!
Really what I needed

[willyhog]

Right, but the stats shift in importance as your stat pools and item level grows. For instance, haste sims way lower (I've found) than multi and vers at lower item levels but actually draws even with multi later on because it scales super hard with your passive haste increase and because of how it interacts with KM. Saying "X > Y" gets a lot of people confused. Providing the actual weightings from the sims would be a lot more useful, and you can create templates to do exactly that to let people decide how to gear based on mathematical data at each particular item level. I can even do that if you want and you can insert them into your guide if you really don't feel like doing it.

Erm, you really didn't though. You said crit isn't useful because we get free crits from KM. Well yes, but the literal explanation is that at the moment of a KM proc the crit stat offers no marginal benefit to the usage of the skill and is therefore not as good as multi, which does in that instance, because you can multi and crit at the same time but you can't "double crit" if that makes sense. I don't think you made that especially clear.

I'm not saying that one is better than the other. All I'm saying is that your method is not the only one and it's presented as being a clear-cut "You need to do this" situation, when in fact the DPS increase is so vanishingly small or nonexistant that glyphed or unglyphed makes zero difference. You should mention that because that's the truth. I really could care less about mastery/FS/diseases and the crunching there, it might "morally" make sense that using glyphed outbreak would be better because you get to use oblit over a fs, but "actually" it makes zero difference in sims and practice and should be stated as such.

The best situation to use PL in (when unglyphed) is as soon as your outbreak comes off cd and you can even use a PS to reapply BP if it's fallen off in the meantime. PL directly into Oblit and then Outbreak. Easy mode. Obviously glyphed would be different.

Purgatory is great because you can DP to cheese fatal mechanics on fights by getting oneshot then DP'ing to stay alive. It's an "oh shit" button which usually serves people well.

[Deleted]

I'm curious as to how the WA-string will function. Will it be like an "advanced" Tell Me When?

[Deleted]

I don't know what Tell Me When does, but the WA-string provided in the guide will just be your rotation. At any given time it will show you the best ability to use at that time based on some parameters (diseases, RP, runes, Blood Charges,...) it also changes dynamically with talents.

[Deleted]

I don't know what Tell Me When does, but the WA-string provided in the guide will just be your rotation. At any given time it will show you the best ability to use at that time based on some parameters (diseases, RP, runes, Blood Charges,...) it also changes dynamically with talents.

Sounds amazing. Will check it out

[Deleted]

So, while the UH DK's are all raging because they got nerfed on AoE (the only reason to play UH was AoE) our haste got buffed, and significantly so. I'm not yet sure what this will do to stat weights, but it will probably improve haste for 2H users (expect it to still be bad for DW). Will probably have to wait for SimCraft update to see what difference this will make.

[Binaris]

at my gear lvl 664, haste already pulled ahead of my multistrike ever so slightly, this is going to blow it out of the water. time to re-enchant