Frost Dk machine gun roation question

[starkiller34 0]

Hey guys;

 

Im wondering what happens to Obliterate if we are using the machine gun rotation/talents? If it fall out of our rotation, doesnt that mean that we are basicly saying goodbye to rime procs? Or can deathsythe proc it too? (im assuming only Obliterate procs it)

If so, I imagine its because the one rune we are spending on Frostscythe instead of the two on Obliterate makes it worth it?

 

Thank you guys for the info!

[Kal 4]

Blainie posted about this in the frost guide thread. He wrote:

 

 

[demonardvark 556]

it's been updated, basically without obliterate in the rotation we do lose rime procs so you just hard cast a howling blast when your frost fever is about to fall off. rime increases the damage of the howling blast but not the disease component so nothing of tremendous value is lost. 

[Valks 2,375]

Indeed, as demon says, a note has been added into the rotation concerning HB without Rime. Pay attention to the Obliteration section as well.

[Keiida 1]

Hi,

What would be a good opener with this spec ? And do you remove Obliterate for FrostScythe instead ?

Thanks

[Kal 4]

I'm not seeing any update yet - current posted version is still

• 25 Sep. 2016: Removed the non-machine gun rotations.

 

Am I caught in cache hell or has this just not been pushed live yet?

[Valks 2,375]

35 minutes ago, Kal said:

Am I caught in cache hell or has this just not been pushed live yet?

This is the note that was added, further changes will come after the patch goes live:

Quote

• Normally, this will be refreshed by the  Howling Blasts you use with  Rime procs, but if you do not have a Rime proc, you can even use Howling Blast without one if Frost Fever is about to expire.

For now, you simply don't Obliterate unless using Obliteration it seems.

[Vellis 0]

Are we certain that not using Obliterate is the way to go?  I ask because the DK that first pushed for machine gun in the frost guide thread seems to use it quite a bit.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/M8mPfVvNJkRq1TKz#fight=24&type=damage-done&source=35

On that Ursoc kill, for example, he has 49 casts of Frostscythe with a crit rate of 71% and 22 casts of Obliterate (so 44 runes spent on Obliterate).  I see those numbers and it looks to me like he's using Obliterate to dump runes to maximize Frozen Pulse uptime and only using Frostscythe on KM procs and when single runes come up.  Two Frostscythes might do more raw damage, but that extra GCD means less Frozen Pulse melee attacks.

[Arcklo 0]

Hey, so the guide was updated but now places using Obliterate above a non-killing machine Frostscythe. Assuming that's right, it doesn't say anything about what to do with any Rime procs it may cause. Do we ignore it and only cast Howling Blast to renew Frost Fever?

And does it still stay the same for Cleave/AoE? I'd expect to at least drop Obliterate then.

Edited September 27, 2016 by Arcklo

[Browed 19]

Rime procs I would use, but certainly there is no harm in using it as a filler due to it being without rune cost.

Also, it's even more important to keep FF up as you get deeper into your Artifact build (Hypothermia).

However, I think this along with a few other question marks will be answered only when we can all physically test for ourselves after the patch/hotfix is applied...

Personally, I've found that the rotation using non-KM FScy under-performs for me in testing, so I've largely stuck to using 2 rune OBlit to get Pulse active faster and keep FScy for KM procs. (single target obviously, for AoE it's back to the FScy spam)

In fact I would almost say that any cleave situation would now be FScy, provided you are near or above 30% crit, due to it being a calculated gamble as to whether you get a 'natural' crit proc as opposed to a 'KM' crit.

Considering the buffs across the board for our baseline rotation, I doubt anyone could reliably predict how it will change if we factor in scaling... eg; pooling RP for Sindragosas Breath... will that become viable? who knows.. and it's likely to be play-style dependent.

I'll certainly be doing a lot of testing come Wednesday (EU).

As an aside, this has been said elsewhere by demonardvark, I've seen this spec shine in mythic+ runs already... 'whoa, who did that AoE stun?.. nice! this trash is so easy now'

Edited September 27, 2016 by Browed
remove inaccurate info

[demonardvark 556]

We need to wait till this afternoon for the realistic numbers to be up. However, a great deal of sim work has been done and there are a lot of talents that are sort of traps. The question comes down to raw single target versus cleave situations. The best single target situation I have found from a different theorycrafter for single target is

icy talons

frozen pulse

avalanche or hungering

runic attenuation

glacial advance

Even with buffs it appears frostscythe is really meant to be a cleave aoe talent, it takes 2 km froscythes and a truckoad of mastery to overtake one obliterate however obliterate both benefits from km, procs rime, and in addition burns runes faster for more frozen pulse uptime. Runic atten generates a ton of runic power for frost strike which has a 25% chance to generate a rune for GA or remorseless winter, what have you. its an exceedingly powerful feedback loop. 

for aoe cleave situations that's where the machine gun rotation will likely fall after patch, with the frostscythe cleave being most valuable. more or less aoe appears that it will be more or less same rotation save for frostscythe spamming. Many talents are just raw dps loses in single target but even in aoe have no place. obliteration is clunky and BOS is a trap. even just checking single target logs we see many many more players doing better without frostscythe then with, many scythe users are up there but for raw single target we see it being neglected by most in the top leader boards (ugly numbers 70-30 using not using if you will). 

Now, we may see changes to this later today as more numbers are crunched. There is a lot of questions even now regarding frosctythe. However, the most complete, precise, and carefully done craft i've seen so far, yields the above talents for single target frost. so, the whole question about rime procs assuming everything above is correct will disappear. If we find things to be different, then I shall return with that information. 

However, the best current info I could find, is runic attenuation over frost scythe for single target, from there machine gun rotation flows the same. This even matches the logs of zefyrk who has been doing insane numbers as well. So, i have 3 ish really strong sources and they all appear to be agreeing with eachother. 

however again, as I do my own testing and get feedback from other theorycrafters, I will post any relevant updates. 

Edit*

even doing ugly math right now. scythe sits at 120% weapon damage with 13% buff that equals 135.6% weapon damage, with a km proc that equals 542.4% weapon damage, versus the raw damage of obliterate at 640%. So two km scythes overtake obliterate right? Well obliterates 640 is also impact by killing machine is a guaranteed crit so that 640% is increased substantially by crit plus all the talent and ability synergy. So, for raw single target I just don't see scythe being beneficial even with buffs. For cleave clearly its king, but not single.

[Browed 19]

1 hour ago, demonardvark said:

So, for raw single target I just don't see scythe being beneficial even with buffs. For cleave clearly its king, but not single.

Looking at this log, chosen as the top current heroic Nythendra frost DK:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/1vJg23zArFPhXfa9#fight=1&type=damage-done&source=17

The average crit and hit numbers are interesting on this issue:

Adding Obliterate offhand and main hand together gives 

Crits (Incl. KM)

Oblit: 256k

Frostscythe: 304k

Hits

Oblit: 101k

Frostscythe: 54k

Obviously, like you say the 50k difference is mitigated by the chance of Rime but even with 70+ iterations of FrostScythe this guy got 10% uptime on Rime with 23 procs all fairly evenly spaced, so I doubt he lost much potential dps by favouring Frostscythe.

Using buff overlay to see how often his KM Oblit proc'd to Rime is interesting as it was only 5 times that I can make out.

Not saying I disagree with your figures/theory, just adding another perspective.

My tendency is definitely to try to get my Oblits in for Frozen Pulse, don't get me wrong there.. however I am leaning towards Frostscythe when I get a KM.

I know I'm all talk at the moment, I'm due to hit the dummy tonight for more comprehensive tests so should have a few runs to compare.

Edited September 27, 2016 by Browed

[demonardvark 556]

1 hour ago, Browed said:

Looking at this log, chosen as the top current heroic Nythendra frost DK:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/1vJg23zArFPhXfa9#fight=1&type=damage-done&source=17

The average crit and hit numbers are interesting on this issue:

Adding Obliterate offhand and main hand together gives 

Crits (Incl. KM)

Oblit: 256k

Frostscythe: 304k

Hits

Oblit: 101k

Frostscythe: 54k

Obviously, like you say the 50k difference is mitigated by the chance of Rime but even with 70+ iterations of FrostScythe this guy got 10% uptime on Rime with 23 procs all fairly evenly spaced, so I doubt he lost much potential dps by favouring Frostscythe.

Using buff overlay to see how often his KM Oblit proc'd to Rime is interesting as it was only 5 times that I can make out.

Not saying I disagree with your figures/theory, just adding another perspective.

My tendency is definitely to try to get my Oblits in for Frozen Pulse, don't get me wrong there.. however I am leaning towards Frostscythe when I get a KM.

I know I'm all talk at the moment, I'm due to hit the dummy tonight for more comprehensive tests so should have a few runs to compare.

Indeed but of the top 30 in the world only 8 used frostscythe, a single instance doesn't make it the end point. Even if we expand to top 50 we get 18, so less than half of the top frost dps are using it. That gap gets even larger looking at ursoc.  You must also take into account artifact lvl and trinkets. Even then when theorycrafters post things its after thousands of simulations run. So different points are welcome, its why we have the community, but a single log and a target dummy don't say much. Plus one must consider the additional uptime on frozen pulse and in addition the bonus damage from rime needs to be added to obliterates value.  Sim craft is now up to date and while not a 100% guaranteed source, it shows obliterate pulling far ahead for single target. 

So, as said before, we need to wait for patch, however, already run simcrafts with the update numbers are already pointing strongly in one direction. For numbers as far as player base we need to give it a week or so for logs to be collected and posted. So, honestly for a couple days we really won't know for sure. Most top guilds do raid on reset so we should have some info by tomorrow but in general we need to give

Even then a lot of time when trying to parse people completely ignore mechanics and have heavy guild support, it's why we must consider a larger range of situations instead of just a couple. 

[Arcklo 0]

First of all, thanks for all the tips, mates!
So i've been trying the Runic Attenuation single target rotation and found that I often get left with a single rune active and both Remorseless Winter and Glacial Advance on cd, thus not having anything to spend that sole rune and trigger Frozen Pulse. Any advice on how I could prevent that? Or is it just a case of spamming Frost Strikes to get a second rune and Obliterating?

[demonardvark 556]

44 minutes ago, Arcklo said:

First of all, thanks for all the tips, mates!
So i've been trying the Runic Attenuation single target rotation and found that I often get left with a single rune active and both Remorseless Winter and Glacial Advance on cd, thus not having anything to spend that sole rune and trigger Frozen Pulse. Any advice on how I could prevent that? Or is it just a case of spamming Frost Strikes to get a second rune and Obliterating?

happens here and there for me as well, i just hard cast a howling blast and say gg. you want to burn that last rune quickly to keep up frozen pulse. 

also preliminary crude testing for me is showing runic atteunation above scythe for single target by a large margin. gotta play around with it more but i think the one crafter was indeed correct. time will tell :)

[Arcklo 0]

4 minutes ago, demonardvark said:

happens here and there for me as well, i just hard cast a howling blast and say gg. you want to burn that last rune quickly to keep up frozen pulse. 

also preliminary crude testing for me is showing runic atteunation above scythe for single target by a large margin. gotta play around with it more but i think the one crafter was indeed correct. time will tell :)

Yeah, for me personally it was some 15k dps difference, so thanks a lot for sharing it! :D

[demonardvark 556]

6 hours ago, Arcklo said:

Yeah, for me personally it was some 15k dps difference, so thanks a lot for sharing it! :D

yup :D

although, after running a number of mythics I realize i was overly optimistic. Frosts buffs are great but unholy is still superior. The CD on certain talents is too high so frosts cleave machine potential is too reduced. In the end for mythic + progression it just comes down to burning everything as fast as possible over stunning, and with unholy dnd ss combo only on a 30 second cd the raw burn power is too high. The sad tldr is unholy is still far superior and frost truly has no real niche. It's fine to play, you'll be able to do lower end progression just fine, but frost still has no niche. its fun to play, and as zefryk showed us, if you love it you can do good with it. but just from raw perspective, unholy is still king by large margins and unholy is still comparatively to the whole one of the lower (est) dps specs.  

[Valks 2,375]

Just wanted to throw this in as well guys, further to demon's points - Tegu has just finished progression, so updates to DK guides are incoming soon!

[Ariakas83 0]

I've raided and run mythics with both frost scythe and runic attenuation.  For raids/single target runic attenuation has run better cause you get more rime procs using obliterate and more frost strikes for more damage and icy talons uptime.  In dungeons I use frost scythe to wreck trash and still do high damage on bosses.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Ariakas83

[demonardvark 556]

On 9/30/2016 at 0:20 PM, Ariakas83 said:

I've raided and run mythics with both frost scythe and runic attenuation.  For raids/single target runic attenuation has run better cause you get more rime procs using obliterate and more frost strikes for more damage and icy talons uptime.  In dungeons I use frost scythe to wreck trash and still do high damage on bosses.

yeah for pure single target raid bosses you can't come close to beating runic attenuation simply because frost strike hits so hard but it also fills a lot of gaps brought on by the machine gun style. in dungeons I really don't change talents all that much, i've honestly gotten into the really bad habit of pulling the entire map and sindragosas furying them down and saying GG. its actually surprisingly effective to do in mythic +'s but if you aim wrong or things don't die you can end up with a very angry tank XD

[demonardvark 556]

one thing i felt compelled to mention here is that until mythic esque gear levels after latest updates frost is catching up to unholy. simcraft (although not a great resource) has frost only 8ishk off of frost. One of the key things I noticed which was reflected by raw sims was the artifact investment. Sindragosa fury is a strong single target ability but after that 5 minute burst ability it offers little. Hypothermia on the other hand gives near constant damage. In addition a couple of the traits leading to SF aren't that valuable in a raid environment compared to the two by hypothermia. So on one of my dks this afternoon I am going to do some costly experiments. I'm going to get damage with SF, but then i am going to respec my artifact into hypothermia first and build from there. Results will be posted but sims already point to that being a much stronger path.

we'll see :)

[demonardvark 556]

On 10/3/2016 at 9:36 AM, demonardvark said:

one thing i felt compelled to mention here is that until mythic esque gear levels after latest updates frost is catching up to unholy. simcraft (although not a great resource) has frost only 8ishk off of frost. One of the key things I noticed which was reflected by raw sims was the artifact investment. Sindragosa fury is a strong single target ability but after that 5 minute burst ability it offers little. Hypothermia on the other hand gives near constant damage. In addition a couple of the traits leading to SF aren't that valuable in a raid environment compared to the two by hypothermia. So on one of my dks this afternoon I am going to do some costly experiments. I'm going to get damage with SF, but then i am going to respec my artifact into hypothermia first and build from there. Results will be posted but sims already point to that being a much stronger path.

we'll see :)

this below comment is certainly in need of some brave testers, however, i am very happy with results

Edit: So while it does sim better hypothermia is really undertuned. SF has a huge cooldown and the dps gain drops off on longer boss fights, however, SF is still the better go to first golden talent in most scenarios. The cruel reality is all of frosts golden talents are rather low dps gains and both very weak and undertuned. however, SF is indeed the better first choice in most scenarios.

so here is the part where i blow some minds, i spent a few hours grinding out a small fortune of ap, I did this to respec my frost artifact away from sindragosas fury, and I saw a tremendous jump in dps. The first golden trait one should pursue IS NOT sindragosas fury but in fact hypothermia. Let's math. Hypothermia gives each tick of frost fever a chance to do 300% attack power. SF does 2000% attack poer. Hypothermia has a chance to proc every tick while SF has a whopping 5 minute cooldown. Therefore to overtake SF hypothermia needs to to tick 6.6667 times in 5 minutes, spoiler alert, it does and then some. Even from there by pursuing hypothermia first we can take ambidex which increases the offhand damage of both obliterate and frost strike, perfectly harmonizing with machine gun rotation. 

So when building artifact

after 3 stacks into frozen skin, i say instead move directly to cold as ice, then mirror ball, then ambidex, then hypothermia.

Now, this does take more artifact lvls then going straight for SF, however it is exceedingly powerful. After snagging hypothermia, i say go back to dead of winter and then pick up SF. 

SF does appear to be a brutally strong attack, however, its CD is just too long, by grabbing hypothermia first we have a stronger ability that works better for both raid bosses and trash. It fits perfectly with machine gun rotation and really compliments it. Doing things this way, I am now only a couple K off from my unholy numbers, however, I am infinitely more consistant. So while I fluctuate a great deal with unholy I do not at frost. There is no RNG really aside from maybe if hypothermia ticks. So, contrary to what many (even myself) have said, Frost is actually quite strong  and fun.

So, tldr

Take Icy Talons, frozen pulse, avalanche, runic attenuation, and glacial advance, shoot for hypothermia first, and giggle with glee as unholy dks see you pass them on dps meters. DKs have scaled very poorly in the past however, with the 7.1 changes coming frost will get even better :D

*note at mythic gears unholy starts to overtake frost a lot, however until then, its a very close race). even with this being said, i'm thinking im switching to frost :D now again this is preliminary testing, however, it both sims and plays much stronger. in many ways its moot for those fairly far in progression as is, you may only be 3 or 4 nodes away from hypothermia as is, however, it gets you a lot more bang for your buck earlier on. of course you eventually ill max out all abilities. 

[Rhaenys 0]

2 hours ago, demonardvark said:

The first golden trait one should pursue IS NOT sindragosas fury but in fact hypothermia

I made an account here solely to say that this seemed to painfully obvious that it has really thrown into question the quality of the builds here. Sindragosa's Fury is so bad that it's not even funny. Sure a 2.2m crit is nice, but considering that's a few obliterates worth of damage, that can be performed in a fraction of the time, I honestly can't figure out why someone thought SF was good.

[Alexizonfire 7]

I am skeptical, i've been keeping a close eye on every overall dmg done after every mythic plus iv done, hypothermia seems to be proccing on average 20-27 times per dungeon, sitting at a whopping 1.2-1.5% of my dmg, behind my crit trinket with the rock dmg proc, and way behind SF which i use on big aoe pulls. That's using MG build with something like 32/10/40 crit haste mast. I've been getting some decent vers too recently though.

[demonardvark 556]

On 10/4/2016 at 7:34 AM, Alexizonfire said:

I am skeptical, i've been keeping a close eye on every overall dmg done after every mythic plus iv done, hypothermia seems to be proccing on average 20-27 times per dungeon, sitting at a whopping 1.2-1.5% of my dmg, behind my crit trinket with the rock dmg proc, and way behind SF which i use on big aoe pulls. That's using MG build with something like 32/10/40 crit haste mast. I've been getting some decent vers too recently though.

Well again, its an early discovery not saying its gods manadate. However sims are favoring it, and if you math it out hypothermia need 6.667 ticks per single boss to out perform SF, at a very minimum mathematically you should get 10 procs, which leads to 900% additional attack damage on single bosses. Now, with trash of course SF is going to pull ahead, there's not time for hypothermia to tick. Trash rarely is a consideration for what talents are optimal. All math is considering the raid environment. Aside from illy each fight has a main target you need to be wailing on (maybe cenarius too) and the fights outside of mythic are going to last you several minutes. in that environment hypothermia shines. Now, once bosses are on farm and you are killing them in under a minute SF is of course infinitely more valuable. However, outside of that in the raid environment hypothermia is superior (because despite how people like to boast on internet less than 5% of player base ever even steps into mythic let alone completes it).

Now in mythic dungeons or any dungeon really you won't see the value in hypothermia, things die too quickly. This was likely the consideration for SF as the first golden talent. In mythic + the trash matters more than the bosses honestly, however, for that one switches to a raw cleave rotation (frost scythe) and yes hypothermia doesn't do well there.

The last consideration as well is that they are both really close to eachother, once you snag one you are only 4 ish nodes from the the other. So, you will have both in relatively short time of each other. So, its really not a super important discovery. However, for right now for emerald nightmare for raiding hypothermia outperforms sindragosas fury in all cases except for illy and even then illy is really a single target priority fight, people doing huge cleave are trying to parse and look good on dps meters.

So i do agree with you in various circumstances.

so tldr

mythic + and less than 1 minute kills SF > Hypo

Longer fights ie raid bosses Hypo > SF

So, it really depends on your end game progression choice.

edit frankly in most early scenarios SF is superior, really all our golden traits are pretty terribad but inspite of sims rng kill hypothermia bad. so SF is realistically the best first golden talent, theoretically hypothermia is better but in real play it doesn't work out, another example of how sims can't be 100% trusted.