Frost build...?

[DawnNoMoreRises]

Greetings Death Knights!

I got a question for all of you Frosties (and everyone else that can give constructive input) about a frost build.
- What must it require? well, being able to solo quests with no problem (so not dependant on others)
- being able to do some DPS (I don't require high DPS atall, but most of the +dmg talents are nice to have)
- to be able to be a tank/frost DPS (wait, what... yeah frost dps) in the future.

So far I came up with 15/56/0 Frost although I have no idea if it's any good (I basicly picked something that was nice/could be nice):X

I'm rather new to death knights (hey, aren't we all) and haven't really checked up on what they can do as frost. still, comments as "omg n00b" won't be appreciated much. I'd like to keep this constructive.
If all of my questions are answered elsewhere then a link to that topic is much appreciated.

Thanks for reading =)
~Laviathan of the Shattered Sun, Witch of Epixplx on Twisting Nether EU

[Avadon]

For starters, your spec will determine if you're good at tanking or dpsing. No spec is going to be good at both.

As for frost specifically, regardless of whether you plan to be dpsing or tanking, you absolutely need 7 points in Unholy for Epidemic. The reasoning behind that is instead of doing Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Obliterate,followed by IT, PS, Obl, Obl, is that with diseases lasting 6 more seconds (18 total), it allows you to IT, PS, BS, BS, Obl followed by Obl, Obl, Obl, effectively trading your dps from the instant damage of IT+PS for 1x Obl. You're also losing 2 seconds of disease damage rougly, but in the end, 1 Obliterate is going to vastly outweigh IT+PS+2s of those diseases. You can expect your IT to crit for about 1800+ while tanking and your PS for a mere 900 or so while tanking. Your Oblit will still be critting for around 3800 even while tanking, with a higher chance of actually critting too.

If tanking, you should take 5/5 Anticipation in Unholy to get Epidemic, should get 5/5 Blade Barrier in Blood, should seriously consider getting 2/2 Frost Aura for 80 resist all for your entire raid, should also consider getting 3/3 Acclimation (it boosts your resistance by 50 btw, stacking 3 times up to a 150 boost, which stacks also with frost aura, giving a potential of 230 resistance with absolutely no resist gear on). You can do without Endless Winter and Chilblains. Icy Talons isn't really neccessary, but if you're going to get it, it's silly not to spend 1 more point to get improved Icy Talons, which not only gives you an additional 5% melee haste (as opposed to 4% per talent point you got from Icy Talons unimproved) but also gives the 20% haste from normal Icy Talons to the whole raid. To get proper tanking talents you're going to have to give up Butchery, Subversion, Rune Tap, and Dark Conviction, which is ok, because they aren't needed to tank. Hungering Cold is handy, but generally also not needed. Personally, for tanking, I've been using 7/56/10; Blade Barrier is a must, haven't figured out yet if the other 2 points belong in Bladed Armor or in 2h weapon specialization, but either way doesn't matter too much. The 10 in unholy, obviously you need 5/5 anticipation for dodge, then I've done 3/3 in Morbidity for the 15-second cooldown Death and Decays vs 30 seconds, which is extremely handy in some situations. As for the frost tree, there's a lot of must-have talents, but you still end up with 6, in my opinion, to play with, maybe even as many as 10 if you decide to skip acclimation and hungering cold.

As for dps, the best frost dps build I've been able to figure out so far is 14 blood, Subversion, Butchery, 2h weapon spec, 3/5 bladed armor, and 4/5 dark conviction; 7 unholy, vicious strikes, morbidity, and epidemic. The frost tree for dps is pretty obvious, you need to get down to Tundra Stalker, to get there you have pretty easy choices, but getting there will only leave you with 21 points left over, 7 of which need to be spent in Unholy, which leaves you with only 14 points for blood, which is why you only end up with 4/5 in dark conviction.

The frost tanking spec takes less damage than any other tank I've come across yet, but also is only capable of doing about 1300 dps on single targets (in 10-man Naxx gear anyway). The aoe agro is strong because you can rotate between death and decay and howling blast+pestilence (after you have your diseases spread to start with anyway). Currently my frost tank has 22% dodge and 20% parry completely unbuffed, then you get another 10% from blade barrier which is up pretty much at all times anyway, an additional 3% chance to be missed from frigid dreadplate, 25k armor, 27k life, and tons of cooldowns to be burned through. You take very little damage, and though you have less life than a druid tank, it's more than enough.

As for dps, with my current dps gear, again, mostly Naxx stuff, with the frost build, I'm able to do about 2200 sustained. It's not mind-blowing, but it's decent. The aoe dps for frost is pretty good too, popping Deathchill and watching a full screen of 6,000's flash up from my Howling Blast always makes me smile.

Anyway, hope this helped..

Edit: I've recently changed to 10/50/11 and like it a lot more. After the patch comes out it will be even better. If you only have 2 points in Blood after Blade Barrier, use them in Bladed Armor, if you can spare to use more, use more in Bladed Armor til it's maxed. My current 10 in Blood is spread 5/5 Blade Barrer, 5/5 Bladed Armor, the 11 in Unholy is 5/5 Anticipation, 3/3 Morbidity, 2/2 Epidemic, 1/1 Corpse Explosion. In the patch they're not only increasing Corpse Explosion damage by 100% but they're also making it cost 40 runic power as opposed to 1 unholy rune, making it an incredible, and unique, aoe runic power dump.