Confused: Runic Attenuation and Glacial Advance

[Cortic]

Okay so both the icy-veins and wowhead guides recommend either the following talent setups:

Glacial Advance + Frostscythe
or
Obliteration + Runic Attenuation

They have tailored their guides towards taking either combination of the above. However, if you look at warcraftlogs, the top performing Frost DK's are consistently taking Glacial Advance + Runic Attenuation.

Could someone explain to me why, and also how are both guides (which are generally fairly reliable sources) all wrong?

[Gridsquare]

Personally, I go with logs over those guides.

[PSYFITTA]

Okay so both the icy-veins and wowhead guides recommend either the following talent setups:

Glacial Advance + Frostscythe
or
Obliteration + Runic Attenuation

They have tailored their guides towards taking either combination of the above. However, if you look at warcraftlogs, the top performing Frost DK's are consistently taking Glacial Advance + Runic Attenuation.

Could someone explain to me why, and also how are both guides (which are generally fairly reliable sources) all wrong?

Glacial Advance + Frostscythe is for AOE
Obliteration + Runic Attenuation for ST.

My playstyle that I like:
AOE: Frostscythe + Oblieration
ST: Runic Attenuation + Oblieration.

[spanishninja]

top dks are using RA+GA because Obliteration is a purely patchwerk talent, and a vast majority of the time you can't really get full benefit of the cooldown.

[Kronik85]

Okay so both the icy-veins and wowhead guides recommend either the following talent setups:

Glacial Advance + Frostscythe
or
Obliteration + Runic Attenuation

They have tailored their guides towards taking either combination of the above. However, if you look at warcraftlogs, the top performing Frost DK's are consistently taking Glacial Advance + Runic Attenuation.

Could someone explain to me why, and also how are both guides (which are generally fairly reliable sources) all wrong?

The guide is out of date, we no longer use Frostscythe for single target post buff. You take RA for raiding since there aren't any fights where the cleave from Frostscythe is useful but for Dungeons it's still worth it.

Obliteration vs GA though is more down to Obliteration feeling very weird, superfluous and weak. With RA your usually GCD capped so it reducing the cost of Obliterate feels pointless, then it lasts 8 seconds and you spend every other GCD weaving in an FS to proc KM so it's basically worth about 2 extra KM procs during that window vs normal play. 2 extra Oblit crits every 1.5 mins is pretty underwhelming in PvE vs GA which you use on CD, cleaves and even gives you something to do if your not in melee range.

[rohendar]

GA vs Oblit:

Any fight where you hit more than 1 target even for part of the fight GA is better than Oblit. Oblit is only good if you only ever hit 1 target the entire fight. Which is almost nothing in all of the raids/dungeons. So GA is standard almost always taken. I don't even like Oblit clunky spam.

FS vs RA:

FS is only used on 4+ targets or 2+if you have KM up. For M+ this is still useful. Except that running without RA makes your rotation clunky, keeping up icy talons becomes much harder. You're gonna do less single target boss dmg by a large margin. Running without FS is still good aoe DPS just from Frozen Pulse etc.

I almost always run RA + GA. With Teeming I sometimes take FS.

[Cortic]

Thanks for the replies guys, helped me understand.

[Farabee]

The guide is out of date, we no longer use Frostscythe for single target post buff. You take RA for raiding since there aren't any fights where the cleave from Frostscythe is useful but for Dungeons it's still worth it.

Frostscythe + Obliteration is very, very effective on Mythic Dragons, where there is constant cleave targets that need to die fast. The extra burst from Obliteration giving you reliable KM provs with Frostscythe is very effective at killing the adds quickly. You can call it "padding" but the faster the various shades die the less likely your tank will die to Taerer's adds, or your raid will get gibbed by mechanics trying to kill Spirit Shades. However, that is the ONLY fight that build is effective on and only if you're not part of the portal team (which unless you have lock portals you should never be). You can also do adds on both sides thanks to MirrorBall clearing stacks of the sleep debuff.

For light cleave (most fights in Mythic EN) and even ST, GA is the superior talent especially if you have the bracers. Reason why is it is the highest damage per rune ability we have in our arsenal. I've had it crit for some purely ridiculous amounts of upwards of 700k or more, and it cleaves, plus the CD is modified by haste. That said, weaving it into your rotation does take skill and aiming it properly for max damage is a learned practice, so I'd assume that's why the IV guide tells new DKs not to use it. It is absolutely amazing on Mythic Ursoc, however, especially if you're tab-targetting to stack Razorice on the phantom bear and Ursoc.

[Deleted]

Frostscythe + Obliteration is very, very effective on Mythic Dragons, where there is constant cleave targets that need to die fast. The extra burst from Obliteration giving you reliable KM provs with Frostscythe is very effective at killing the adds quickly. You can call it "padding" but the faster the various shades die the less likely your tank will die to Taerer's adds, or your raid will get gibbed by mechanics trying to kill Spirit Shades. However, that is the ONLY fight that build is effective on and only if you're not part of the portal team (which unless you have lock portals you should never be). You can also do adds on both sides thanks to MirrorBall clearing stacks of the sleep debuff.

Don't know what your talking about here, hardly any top logs even running FSc let alone both that and oblit...

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...ght&spec=Frost

[Akusa202]

GA vs Oblit:

Any fight where you hit more than 1 target even for part of the fight GA is better than Oblit. Oblit is only good if you only ever hit 1 target the entire fight. Which is almost nothing in all of the raids/dungeons. So GA is standard almost always taken. I don't even like Oblit clunky spam.

FS vs RA:

FS is only used on 4+ targets or 2+if you have KM up. For M+ this is still useful. Except that running without RA makes your rotation clunky, keeping up icy talons becomes much harder. You're gonna do less single target boss dmg by a large margin. Running without FS is still good aoe DPS just from Frozen Pulse etc.

I almost always run RA + GA. With Teeming I sometimes take FS.

I really wish people would stop with this. Yes, not having RA does feel worse on single target and makes icy talons harder, and you will do less boss damage, but not by a large margin. However, you will do less trash damage by a very large margin. And in mythic pluses, this is where you will spend the majority of your time doing damage. Even on tyrannical frostscythe just makes things much faster.

[Akakishin]

I really wish people would stop with this. Yes, not having RA does feel worse on single target and makes icy talons harder, and you will do less boss damage, but not by a large margin. However, you will do less trash damage by a very large margin. And in mythic pluses, this is where you will spend the majority of your time doing damage. Even on tyrannical frostscythe just makes things much faster.

The thing is in high level mythics target priority and focusing on one trash while cleaving with ga/hb/rw will result to high cleave numbers and great st damage. HB hits like an apache lol. Also bosses have way more hp and really require good and consistent st damage. RA/GA is just better for raiding and high level mythics imo.

[Kheim]

I know I'm not some top DK or anything like that but my main problem with obliteration was partially mentioned above which is not being able to get the full use out of it BUT the other thing I notice is how when it's about to come off cd I basically have to stop damaging to be able to get full use from it. You want all your runes so you can use all your oblits and you don't want to spend RP because you need to be able to FS. So your doing less damage in "hopes" of doing more overall AND you'll prolly be loosing icy talons uptime as well which is huge. That's just my personal experience with it and I'm sure others could prove that invalid. But that's my 2 cent!

[Kronik85]

I know I'm not some top DK or anything like that but my main problem with obliteration was partially mentioned above which is not being able to get the full use out of it BUT the other thing I notice is how when it's about to come off cd I basically have to stop damaging to be able to get full use from it. You want all your runes so you can use all your oblits and you don't want to spend RP because you need to be able to FS. So your doing less damage in "hopes" of doing more overall AND you'll prolly be loosing icy talons uptime as well which is huge. That's just my personal experience with it and I'm sure others could prove that invalid. But that's my 2 cent!

You don't need all your runes when you pop Obliteration, 2 or 3 max should get you through if not 1. You will be using Oblit then FS, Oblit now only costs 1, FS might proc a rune which fuels your next Oblit and so on. Ideally you want to go into Oblit when you have no more than 2 runes available to maximise FP uptime.

Try and start with 2 runes and 25-50 RP and you will be fine.

[Eruntien]

Oblit is pure ST, it is good on fights like nythendra an Guarm. Patchwerk umplies no mechanics

[connor778]

Don't know what your talking about here, hardly any top logs even running FSc let alone both that and oblit...

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...ght&spec=Frost

I personally don't like obliteration so I never use it. But there are definitely quite a few top parses that use frostscythe for ilgynoth and dragons. Even a couple people that use obliteration and scythe.

[Mollox]

RA + GA = Legendary Wrist build.
RA + OB = Non-Legendary Wrist build.

Plenty of logs show OBRA performing just fine, feel free to check the Guarm Mythic logs.
The reason people play with Glacial Advance when they have the wrists it's because it actively gains a substantial damage increase due to how the wrists interact with Pillar of Frost, every time PoF comes off CD your GA will hit harder, it's simple maths really.

Let's simplify it though:

Glacial Advance = Frost Damage
Obliteration (Obliterate) = Physical Damage

Glacial Advance scales with your mastery, frozen core & cold as ice traits as well as the wrists, Obliterate doesn't :P

[Worthlessdk]

From what I can see nobody is using obliteration the correct way.

DK dps is about not flooding yourself with resources. You need to be using your runes and rp at the exact rate they are generated, otherwise you are missing out on dps by either leaving runes up and consequently starving yourself of rp, or overcapping rp and wasting frost strike + rune regen procs.

That being said, if obliteration is used at a time where it can perfectly match the flow of your resources while keeping up frozen pulse, the amount of damage it puts out is absurd.

Obliteration should be looked at similarly to empower rune weapon. These two skills are not your typical cooldowns that should just be blown at the beginning of a boss fight. Why? because at that point you are likely to have a surplus of resources, meaning your are not only likely to be wasting some, but you are also lacking frozen pulse (roughly 10% of your damage). These cooldowns should be used when you are out of resources in order to not drop your sustain damage for a second.
Obliteration should only be used when you have enough rp for one frost strike and ideally only one rune about to come up, but as few runes as possible. You could even go so far as to gamble and not have any runes up when you cast your first frost strike, banking on that proccing the single rune for your obl. That being said, if you already have KMS procced, you only need to look for the single rune to begin your obliteration.

During obliteration you should be alternating frost strike and obliterate like a mad man. Nothing else. If your auto attacks proc a kms then skip that frost strike. Why? The key to frost dps is aiming to make sure you're filling every gcd with a big hit. What are your big hits? Your guaranteed crit on KMS obliterate is STATISTICALLY your highest hitting ability. If everything were to crit, Rime proc is your hardest hitting ability followed by frost strike.

Having a KMS obliterate every other GCD with the other GCDs being filled with frost strike means you are literally "obliterating" your target, especially during lust.

AFTER ALL THAT... You can say that many people pass over obliterate for some of the following reasons:
1) Can be very difficult to use while keeping frozen pulse up
2) Wasted rime procs
3) Often inefficient to use directly off cd making it technically offer less value the longer it sits
4) 8 second window to perfectly execute or bust

I personally find myself running obliteration quite regularly. But if you are asking the question of which to use, I would say run glacial advance. It is likely the superior dps choice on SOME fights to begin with and it is much easier to use efficiently.

As stated above in this thread, the frost bracers would also be a strong incentive toward running glacial advance.

Only take obliteration if you are very confident with it in an almost purely single target encounter.

This was an analysis concerning raids. Mythic+ is far too variable to discuss in such a generalized way.

[ellieg]

If you take GA, is it part of your normal ST rotation?

[Cosmic Janitor]

That being said, if obliteration is used at a time where it can perfectly match the flow of your resources while keeping up frozen pulse, the amount of damage it puts out is absurd.

I'm not sure I would call the damage boost absurd, considering what it does (bridging resource gaps and guaranteeing you ~4 critical oblits) and the crit levels most of us rock anyway these days. It's more of a nice to have for emergencies... absurd damage is nuking a bunch of low hp adds with sindy.

[0verdose]

If you take GA, is it part of your normal ST rotation?

ofc it is, for me anyways. It's our highest damage per rune ability and I use it on cd. I think you're making a big mistake if you only use it for aoe.