What's better AoE, frost or Unholy?

[Cyaris]

As the title asks I'm wondering what does better aoe damage? My unholy weapon masterwork elementium deathblade, and my frost weapons are both the swords from beth.

[Deleted]

Depends on the encounter. Burst AoE, Frost. Sustained AoE (can only think Rhyolith I guess?) then Unholy.

[Wingwraith]

Frost.
For Unholy to be better than Frost on Rhyo, youd have to get good cooperation from your add tank to have DnD do its full damage.

[Zaubo]

It will be difficult to beat a frost DK on boss fights in FL that involve AOE. If you are referring to something like trash or 5 man heroics, I can do a lot more AOE dps as Unholy due to stronger DND, diseases, and massive ghoul cleaves. This requires your AOE targets to be still and IN your DND though.

[cFortyfive]

on a huge amount of static targets that live long enough both can do equal with an edge for unholy I'd say. For everything important in firelands the burst aoe of frost wins hands down.

[Cyaris]

I was asking this mainly for the ryo fight. Im pretty much tanking the rest of the fights.

[Zaubo]

I have done Rhyo as frost and unholy. I usually play UH as my offspec (as I am the main tank) but I DPS those fights. Personally I am frustrated playing UH on the Rhyo fight. I tried it one night and just did not enjoy it. I would definitely recommend going frost for that fight. Your ability to heavily burst legs to steer, and your ease of turning to HB slimes for the slow is just too nice to pass up.

Note that this is coming from someone who hates frost. It is just that much better on that fight.

[Cyaris]

I didn't get a chance to give a more in depth reply earlier since I was about to head out, but I get to do that now I suppose.

We're a 10 man guild working on heroic rhyolith. I have been tasked to kill the fragments. What I've been doing was just howling blasting them as they spawn to gather them up and had a boomkin druid help aoe them down. I know the initial rounding them up would be slower as unholy, I just didn't know if the unholy aoe dps (and the stronger AMS for attacking the spark) would outdo the frost aoe dps.

As for our group set up
Boomkin Druid
Arcane Mage
Enhancement Shaman
Assassination Rogue
Hunter

[Morbycakes]

They're about equal on sustained, however Unholy can *only* do sustained. Therefore, for every single FL fight, Frost will be better.

[Peyj]

Utterly noob question here, what's your usual set up for Frost AOE? (E.g. your priority/etc) What kind of DPS do you pull?

[Cyaris]

On the rhyo fight it's usually between 17-19k dps. As for my priority I usually just burn through my frost/death runes with howling blast, drop a DnD with an unholy rune, and frost strike with my runes on cd to try and get a frost/death rune back.

Of course my last time fighting him I was using the gurubashi punishers and some 353 boots/legs/wrists that I've upgraded since then.

[Peyj]

Thanks for the reply, just confirming I'm doing it right.

I still have the Gurubashi Punishers. But she's just my little alt!

[Deleted]

Unholy wins out on 5-10 second fights and 30+ second fights. Rhyolith heroic is a fantastic example to show where Unholy shines provided you use the blob kiting tactic and don't waste your DPS trying to nuke the blobs down. I would say Unholy is the best out of all melee specs on this fight since it can sustain fantastic single target damage to steer him as well as provide huge AoE damage without even having to think about keeping it up.