DWF and Haste

[Penon]

What is the haste cap for DWF? I have not seen one mentioned, but I am sitting at 30% haste buffed without heroism in frost presence, and it feels like I don't have enough GCDs to keep my runes uncapped, keep blood tap charges uncapped and keep my RP uncapped. I also have the T18 2-set, so the Obliteration buff would give me another 3% haste on top of that. Is there something I can do to alleviate this other than changing gear?

[Schizoide]

Blood Tap is off the GCD, FYI.

The DW T18N profile is GCD-capped, simming at 9% wait time. That profile has 1355 haste rating. For some reason it enchants one ring to haste too, which I assume is a mistake in the profile (not a big deal). Anyway, you get a ton more haste rating on gear plus high uptime on 5% haste from the set bonus (Obliteration sims at a whopping 78% uptime), and all that consumes GCDs.

The DW T17M profile, at only 775 haste rating, is also close to GCD-capped at 12.7% wait time. But not quite capped-- to me at least, 12.7% feels tremendously better than 9%.

There's not much point in talking about a cap, as you'll always want higher itemlvl gear and even when GCD-capped haste is DW frost's second-best secondary stat.

[Penon]

That would make some sense, I'm sitting at 1178 with 2p T17 and T18. I'm at 60-70% uptime on the Obliteration buff as it is, depending on when my KMs proc. As to blood tap being off the GCD, I know that. What happens sometimes is a phase change comes and I can't do anything for like 3 seconds. I feel like 3 seconds of downtime determined by the encounter shouldn't cause me to get behind enough that I end up at any point with blood tap, RP, or runes capped at any point. Is being stuck between both sets making me way over-capped on GCDs?

[Valkaneer]

Blood Tap is off the GCD, FYI.

The DW T18N profile is GCD-capped, simming at 9% wait time. That profile has 1355 haste rating. For some reason it enchants one ring to haste too, which I assume is a mistake in the profile (not a big deal). Anyway, you get a ton more haste rating on gear plus high uptime on 5% haste from the set bonus (Obliteration sims at a whopping 78% uptime), and all that consumes GCDs.

The DW T17M profile, at only 775 haste rating, is also close to GCD-capped at 12.7% wait time. But not quite capped-- to me at least, 12.7% feels tremendously better than 9%.

There's not much point in talking about a cap, as you'll always want higher itemlvl gear and even when GCD-capped haste is DW frost's second-best secondary stat.

Every guide I have seen EJ and Icy veins and AMR puts haste almost last.

str > mast> multistrike>vers> haste> crit. AMR has haste flip flopped with vers.

[v1rus]

Every guide I have seen EJ and Icy veins and AMR puts haste almost last.

str > mast> multistrike>vers> haste> crit. AMR has haste flip flopped with vers.

Ever since the 6.2 changes, Haste jumped up in my sims to be slightly above Multistrike for single target. I don't have any offhand, but my sims show something like WDPS > Str > Mast > Haste > Multi > ODPS > Vers > Crit.

Skull has it listed as equal in value with Multi and Vers: http://summonstone.com/deathknight/frost/#stats, and you can see the actual weights for it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1462568764. Haste is higher than multi, but not by much at all. Pretty much equal in value.

[Schizoide]

I simmed it with DW T18N, and got haste as the second-best secondary stat, after mastery. Obviously that could change as you gear up, and (again) I must caveat that I'm busy today so my sims today don't have the buffs to oblit/FS/HB/set bonuses reverted.

[Penon]

How much does the T17 2-set change things, then? (30 Runic Power when you use Pillar of Frost). Given that the haste values are 775 with T17 and then 1355 for T18, even allowing for ilevel differences, would the T17 2-set be forcing me into a position where I have more resource generation than I have the ability to burn it?

[Schizoide]

The T17M sims include the T17 set bonuses, of course. Are you asking what happens with both the T17 and T18 2p bonuses? That's a bit specific, suggest you import your own character from the armory and sim it. But the T18 2p bonus is essentially 4% haste, it's a ton, and I would expect it to GCD-cap anyone in decent T17 gear (which is already close to cap).

[Penon]

Is there a specific place to look to see how close to the GCD cap you are?

Something else that occurs to me is movement. Using Iskar as an example, since it is the most recent fight in my memory. Moving out for chakram, getting phantasmal winds and not getting the eye until you are out of range of melee attacks, the brief pause before each add intermission. When I get back to the boss I am usually close or at cap for resources. Is that just the nature of DWF, or is there something I can do in that situation to not cap?

[Schizoide]

Yes, look at your wait time at the top of the sim results. This is the percentage of time you spend waiting on resources. As DKs have a 1.0s GCD, generally speaking 10% or lower is GCD-locked.

There's no real way to avoid capping when you lose time on target. You can (and should) throw out Howling Blasts and Defile/DnD at range of course, but once those runes are used up you have no way to spend Runic Power to generate more through rune regen talents as Frost lost Death Coil in 6.0.

Remember the sim is patchwerk, with 100% time on target. Real raids aren't like that, so really even the ~12% wait time of T17 DW frost is essentially GCD-locked most of the time. Everybody's opinion varies, but I personally like a wait time around 15%.