Frost weapon swapping for increased damage.

[Unholyground]

Well like the title says, now that the razorice is a guaranteed proc at 2% for 5 stacks, I have been swapping out much like rogues do and building up the 10% frost vulnerability then going back to cinder glacier in my OH until its almost worn off then back to refresh, and on boss fights its a nice dps increase, has anyone else started doing this?

[Praxis]

No.

[Unholyground]

You should its pretty sweet if you have 3 of the same 1H

[Praxis]

I really doubt it is, especially considering that Cinderglacier's proc rate isn't amazing, and if you have a resto druid you're PROBABLY wasting GCDs you could be using to FS.

[Sylore]

The only way i see anyone getting 3 of the same mace is either your a loot whore, you have toc weapons, or your just really lucky and have no one rolling on these mace....

[Shiira]

I suggested this on EJ but they weren't very open to the idea and claimed that the lost global cooldowns would mean that it couldn't possibly be a dps increase. It is though, because you can just swap your weapon immediatly after putting yourself on global cooldown with an ability.

[Albert the fish]

the only weapon swapping that REALLY makes any sense for us frosties is to have one weapon set aside with CG on it for trash and use the better weapon for RI on bosses

that being said, it's my opinion and i'll have to see parses before we can make a final determination. you suggested it. go test it.
come back with parses of your dps without weapon swapping and with weapon swapping. don't cheat.

[Praxis]

The only way i see anyone getting 3 of the same mace is either your a loot whore, you have toc weapons, or your just really lucky and have no one rolling on these mace....

Depending on raid composition, it's entirely possible. I mean, I know rogues who play Mutilate exclusively and don't even attempt to get Combat weapons, tanks who don't want threat weapons, etc.
Or you could be doing 10 mans and be the only one in your group who can use slow one handers for deeps.

@ Shiira, if swapping weapons does not itself invoke the GCD, I suppose it's possible. I was under the impression that weapon changes were both affected by the GCD, and caused one.

[conscript]

The only way i see anyone getting 3 of the same mace is either your a loot whore, you have toc weapons, or your just really lucky and have no one rolling on these mace....

Well it isn't all the unlikely. There is one other spec that will roll on a 1-hand mace (Enhance). Even if he is just talking ICC10 Weapons he could easily have 3 of the axes off Gunship or 3 Guttbusters. Hell that axe dropped every run for the first six weeks of ICC10 to the point where my Shaman, and two Hunters had a set of them.

I can see where the benefit comes from but can you really afford to waste 2 GCDs? For a debuff that lasts 20 seconds you will spend 3 seconds just switching weapons which seems fairly ridiculous.

[Unholyground]

The only way i see anyone getting 3 of the same mace is either your a loot whore, you have toc weapons, or your just really lucky and have no one rolling on these mace....

Nighttime...I actually at one point had 5 of them by accident doing greed rolls, drops literally every time I run H PoS. I just think since its a guaranteed proc on the target now it will be much easier and faster to sustain for bosses/raid bosses. Before today's patch swapping was definitely a no no, but now it kinda seems worth it.

[conscript]

@ Shiira, if swapping weapons does not itself invoke the GCD, I suppose it's possible. I was under the impression that weapon changes were both affected by the GCD, and caused one.

Weapon switching does enable the GCD. As far as it goes for switching during a gcd I'm not sure though.

[Shiira]

@ Shiira, if swapping weapons does not itself invoke the GCD, I suppose it's possible. I was under the impression that weapon changes were both affected by the GCD, and caused one.

Partially correct, weapon swaps cause a global cooldown but are not affected by it.

It's rarely worth it since you need two offhands of the same item level, preferably both the same weapon, but it's still a potential dps increase when done correctly. Frost has low enough fallen crusader uptime that it would greatly benefit from also being able to proc it from the offhand most of the time, I'm not too sure about how useful cinderglacier would be though.

[Albert the fish]

Partially correct, weapon swaps cause a global cooldown but are not affected by it.

It's rarely worth it since you need two offhands of the same item level, preferably both the same weapon, but it's still a potential dps increase when done correctly. Frost has low enough fallen crusader uptime that it would greatly benefit from also being able to proc it from the offhand most of the time, I'm not too sure about how useful cinderglacier would be though.

when did this become about which runes to use?

[Praxis]

I'm not too sure about how useful cinderglacier would be though.

I really can't see getting a CG proc within those 20 seconds outside of being pretty lucky.

[Shiira]

I really can't see getting a CG proc within those 20 seconds outside of being pretty lucky.

Possibly not but the alternative is the damage from the razorice proc, last time I checked that hit for like 30.

[Unholyground]

I really can't see getting a CG proc within those 20 seconds outside of being pretty lucky.

Not sure but Ive been rocking cinderglacier on my offhand for a long time and it procs quite a lot now that I think of it. Does everyone else use double Fallen?

[Albert the fish]

no, most frost dps use Fallen/Razorice

[Simbert]

You should, however, not forget that switching weapons does not only cause a GCD, it also causes your swingtimer to reset. This means that on average, you will lose half a whitehit with the MH and half a hit with the OH every time you do so. This can obviously be reduced with careful planning, but in this case you would have to look at three conditions whenever you want to switch, making it pretty complicated. You need to look at the remaining time of your procced stack, you need to just have used a GCD, and you need to just have had a white swing.

While it might be possible to do something like this, it involves lots of micromanaging, and thus takes your focus away from the battle, which can lead to additional problems, like reacting slower to changes.

However, so far i have not seen anyone bring any solid calculation/simulation/other data of whether or not this makes sense at all. So without any of this, you can be discussing this subject for weeks without coming to a reasonable solution.