Frost changes...

[tvveeder]

Do the posted changes reduce the effectiveness of the IT spam knight? To me personally I'm not going to say it's dead, but it will certainly take a bit of a hit with the change. Having IT damage reduced by 20% overall is a huge number (10% reduced from Black Ice, 15% reduced from IIT, 5% increase from Guile) and will certainly drop it's numbers quite a bit. Not to mention that means that frost strike will take a 5% hit as well (If I'm doing my math correctly, 10% reduction from black ice, 5% increase on guile).

That being said does this relegate frost DK's to go strictly unholy sub spec'ed? I know the spam knight's primary dps is a combination of IT and FS (with FS being the most damage of course) but now with the reduced damage of IT by so much does it make this spam spec fall behind? Has anyone done any testing? Personally I'd say if this really affects a spamknight a lot then there is no reason to sub blood as frost.

[psicorp]

the 6 icy touch spam spec is dead, nothing wrong with the rest of the frost tree

[tvveeder]

Well then what's the use of going sub blood? The crit isn't all that necessary especially if you pick up KM, VotW is nice, but it doesn't MAKE a whole build with only 1 point in it, Rune Tap is good for utility, survivability, and PvP, but doesn't buff DPS. The only thing that's really good out of the blood tree is subversion and bladed armor, the rest amounts to nothing. Personally I would think that BCB, Necrosis, perma Ghoul, 3% str, 3% hit, and so on from the unholy tree would add so much more to a frost build in 3.1 now.

[psicorp]

Well then what's the use of going sub blood? The crit isn't all that necessary especially if you pick up KM, VotW is nice, but it doesn't MAKE a whole build with only 1 point in it, Rune Tap is good for utility, survivability, and PvP, but doesn't buff DPS. The only thing that's really good out of the blood tree is subversion and bladed armor, the rest amounts to nothing. Personally I would think that BCB, Necrosis, perma Ghoul, 3% str, 3% hit, and so on from the unholy tree would add so much more to a frost build in 3.1 now.

for dps frost knights were going to subspec unholy with or without these changes. most pvp knights as well, actually, assuming they can find a healer to nail to there ass to make up for the loss of RT and it being so much more expensive to deathpact your ghoul

[Talamare]

for dps frost knights were going to subspec unholy with or without these changes. most pvp knights as well, actually, assuming they can find a healer to nail to there ass to make up for the loss of RT and it being so much more expensive to deathpact your ghoul

Actually Frost DK could go either way,
Blood for more crit, ap and 6x IT for huge amount of RP for FS
or Unholy for Necrosis, BCB, Pet, hit rating on their spells

[tvveeder]

Actually Frost DK could go either way,
Blood for more crit, ap and 6x IT for huge amount of RP for FS
or Unholy for Necrosis, BCB, Pet, hit rating on their spells

This is true, the RP generation for 6 x IT does help, but the problem is that with the reduced damage when you are spamming that 6 x IT you will now be losing DPS by doing so. So yes theoretically it will be really nice for spamming IT and then dropping 4 FS's but IMO you will overall lose DPS because of IT's damage reduction. The big part of the spam knight was that IT's hit hard, and FS hit even harder. Now you will have IT's that hit for so so damage and FS's that hit for about the same meaning that you will lose a lot of DPS during the IT spam and not make up for it during the FS spam. Also as I said the crit is negligible, as frost stacking crit doesn't matter due to the nature of how the spec is (with KM, innate crit talents, and so on). So the only thing you get from blood that is of any REAL use is subversion and bladed armor (9% crit to BS and OB and an AP buff).

[Talamare]

In the IT spam build my IT % is about 25%
The damage done by IT is 18% lower
Which means a 4-5% dps nerf

and this isnt final yet :-X