Frost DPS 7.1 ALL you need to know!

[Casterbridge]

Far as I can tell Frost is actually pretty decent with any of the secondary stats, yeah you want a certain amount of haste and crit, but after that they are all decent, and the more important thing is pure ilevel for the strength gains, makes gearing a frost DK much less of a pain.

[Hoeth]

Far as I can tell Frost is actually pretty decent with any of the secondary stats, yeah you want a certain amount of haste and crit, but after that they are all decent, and the more important thing is pure ilevel for the strength gains, makes gearing a frost DK much less of a pain.

Pretty much. This is a FAR departure from every expansion in DK existence, where crit was almost always very weak, and mastery was very weak for 2h frost. There were points where we were GCD locked or close to it where haste was garbage too.

[Schizoide]

There were deliberate changes made to address those issues based on literally a decade of feedback. KM procs from crit autoattacks which preserves some crit scaling, the GCD now scales with haste, and Obliterate deals proportionally less of your total damage.

[Deleted]

Well, because it is. There is no such thing like a 20% softcap as that icy veins guide makes everyone to believe. Haste is extremely strong for Frost, especially when you take RA as talent. Icy veins and other guides are probably good for a starting point, but the problem with all that guides is, that they are either written fom a personal point of view (current gear of guide writer) or from a highly theoretical point of view (BiS gear compilation). But none of the two applies 100% to YOUR current setup and gear.

I should be more explicit next time. I didn't entirely ignore the sims, I used a couple of sims from SCraft to evaluate whether I should gem/enchant with haste or versatility and in this rare scenario I chose the second best stat (by a small margin) over the other due to the other benefits that versatility can give, albeit small ones. We're talking about 2 gems and 2 ring enchants here, hardly game breaking. I often treat SCraft sims as the Holy grail, but in this case I chose to use it as a mere guide. At the very least I know that a haste is still valuable and will currently remain as my first or second best stat for this patch anyway.

Thanks for your useful comments.

[Gr1mdark]

Another quick question.

RW - single target (think Nythendra, Guarm)
Do I use it?
Got the third artifact trait and Koltira's Newfound Will for additional runes.

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No one can help me out here?

[zvr]

RW with it's golden trait is dps neutral on pure single target.
With Koltira belt it could be tricky to keep maximum Frozen Pulse uptime so, for example, using RW to burn that single idle rune (when no KM is available and GA on cd) is viable.

[Deleted]

RW with it's golden trait is dps neutral on pure single target.
With Koltira belt it could be tricky to keep maximum Frozen Pulse uptime so, for example, using RW to burn that single idle rune (when no KM is available and GA on cd) is viable.

But do i even use Ga on pure singeltarget? since it can fuck with my runes if i use it on cd wouldnt it be better to use obli?

[Gr1mdark]

RW with it's golden trait is dps neutral on pure single target.
With Koltira belt it could be tricky to keep maximum Frozen Pulse uptime so, for example, using RW to burn that single idle rune (when no KM is available and GA on cd) is viable.

I am using Obli , not GA. Is it better to run GA with the belt?
So neutral does mean that there will be no difference in using it or not?

[b-reezy]

If you have the leg helm should you go FF or stay with FP?

[Hoeth]

If you have the leg helm should you go FF or stay with FP?

FP is as far ahead of the other choices in that row as Surrender to Madness is with its neighbors.

Well, maybe not that far ahead, but there really is no choice with that tier.

[DagrDK]

FP is as far ahead of the other choices in that row as Surrender to Madness is with its neighbors.

Well, maybe not that far ahead, but there really is no choice with that tier.

Could change when the patch comes, but until final tuning is done, it's hard to say. For now, FP is the big winner.

[Elerubard]

I am using Obli , not GA. Is it better to run GA with the belt?
So neutral does mean that there will be no difference in using it or not?

It depends. Do you have the wrists as well? If so, GA wins out. Obliteration and GA are close, but OB is finicky untill you get enough haste for an extra cast in it's window. I ran heroic and part of mythic EN this week with GA and didn't notice much if any difference.

[zvr]

Both Obliteration and Glacial Advance are very close, someone in this thread even wrote calculations long time ago that taking GA over Oblit on pure ST is ~3% dps loss but I don't know if that calculation included legendary bracers (which I have).
From time to time I test both talents on M EN and difference, at least for me, is abysmal.
Also - Obliteration requires perfectly timed usage to grant noticeable dps increase and GA provides stable and predictable gain.
And minmaxing Frozen Pulse uptime with Koltira belt AND Obliteration is sometimes really tricky.
So it really depends what playstyle you prefer. I for one prefer simple fire-and-forget GA

[Valenhil]

Having just leveled a FDK for subbing, I must say. The current meta talent choices may be efficient, but they're extremely boring.

Since I like me a few more buttons to press, my favorite setup would be this. Unfortunately, it's horrible.

Since both Breath and runic empowerment are both being buffed by around 50%, I feel all that's missing would be a Rime proc on Frostscythe for me to actually have fun with FDK again.

[Piz813]

Bump
new guide out. Same link. Should answer many with the same question

[Deleted]

Bump
new guide out. Same link. Should answer many with the same question

I've asked this question long ago but maybe now with all those buffs to BoS it may be relevant again.



Using a normal OBRA-Build but using BoS instead of GA or Obliteration.


With BoS on cooldown - the normal rotation with Icy Talons etc.
With BoS running - no more Froststriks - no Icy Talons.

With legendary Belt + Ring:
Is this viable? It is easier to run because in heavy movement fights I think keeping BoS up is quite difficult.
But when BoS is on CD - all I'm loosing compared to the normal OBRa build is the last tier talent.

Without legendary Belt and/or ring:
Maybe still viable?

Would it be a DPS gain ?

[Necropotence]

I've asked this question long ago but maybe now with all those buffs to BoS it may be relevant again.



Using a normal OBRA-Build but using BoS instead of GA or Obliteration.


With BoS on cooldown - the normal rotation with Icy Talons etc.
With BoS running - no more Froststriks - no Icy Talons.

With legendary Belt + Ring:
Is this viable? It is easier to run because in heavy movement fights I think keeping BoS up is quite difficult.
But when BoS is on CD - all I'm loosing compared to the normal OBRa build is the last tier talent.

Without legendary Belt and/or ring:
Maybe still viable?

Would it be a DPS gain ?

What I've read so far is that in order to make BoS viable, you want to aim for about 40% - 50% uptime. If the fight has heavy movement to the point where this isn't sustainable, you are probably better off going for a pure OBRA build. The honest truth however is that no one knows for sure yet, and probably won't for another two weeks.

[Schizoide]

That doc says AMS will proc Sephuz's Secret. How does that work-- I assume only if AMS actually dispels a debuff on the casting player? So this would only work for Frost with the Mirror Ball artifact talent.

[bubbadubba]

FP is as far ahead of the other choices in that row as Surrender to Madness is with its neighbors.

Well, maybe not that far ahead, but there really is no choice with that tier.

I have the legendary belt, I did the math on a few of my logs, even on my lowest up time frozen pulse was way ahead of the other two talents.

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Bump
new guide out. Same link. Should answer many with the same question

I remember seeing some sims about a GS build being best for cleave fights and all around decent with single target and AoE. I don't see anything in your guide on it, is it now not viable ?

[Casterbridge]

This is going to be an interesting couple of weeks curious to see what results people have, with Frost and UH.